


And I'll Protect Them Too

by likesflowers



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Uhura-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-10-28 22:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10840869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likesflowers/pseuds/likesflowers
Summary: As she walked down that ramp on Kronos, wind whipping her hair around, she could feel Spock and Kirk’s apprehension wrap around her like an extra coat. It’s not that she wasn’t scared--anyone with half a brain would be shaking in their boots right now. But if anyone was going to show up to a fight with Klingons on their own turf armed with nothing but words, it was Nyota Uhura. And she was damn well going to win, too. Because words had always been her weapon of choice.Or, how Nyota's love of language shaped her history, her role on the Enterprise, and thereby the universe.





	1. Chapter 1

When she was six years old, she was admiring an antique saber on the wall of her grandparents house. Her grandfather noticed her looking at it.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?"

Tiny little Nyota nodded her head earnestly. She hadn't grown her hair long, yet, nor had she tamed her naturally wild curls. "Can you teach me to use it, abuelo? I want to be the strongest fighter in the galaxy when I'm grown up. And I'll protect Earth from the mean aliens and help us become friends with the nice ones. And I'll protect them too."

Her abuelo smiled. "You've got big plans there, don't you, mongoose?"

She just looked at him, eyes wide and hopeful.

Abuelo's face did that thing it did sometimes, where it transformed from her familiar grandfather into the wise serious face she didn't recognize except on the holos, like he was looking straight through her, through her muscles and skeleton and seeing the universe inside her.

"Oh, my dear Nyota. You'll do all that and more, I have no doubt. But I've got a far better weapon for you to learn than an old sword."

Nyota was six and the antique blade glistened sharply. It was sleek, and elegant, and deadly. She couldn't imagine a better weapon, not even those phasers the neighborhood kids pretended the had when they played cops and robbers. Nonetheless, she trusted her abuelo.

"Ok. Teach me, then." She stood and dropped into the side stance she'd seen kung fu artists take in the holos. "I'm ready."

Abuelo smiled, oddly insightful, which, were she older, would remind her that this man was one of the planet’s most esteemed experts in methods for cross-species communications accounting for differences in psi abilities. That despite--perhaps because of--his psi-null status, he could take one look at a room and read the occupants better than they knew themselves. At the moment, of course, she just saw the man who always saw through her pranks and never punished her for them.

"Sit, Nyota. Get your mother to teach you the kung fu stuff. For my lesson, you just need your brain. Now, let's begin with an easy one. Repeat after me: moja, mbili, tatu..."

\---------------

Despite the fact that she worshiped the ground her abuelo walked on, she didn't really understand what he meant about language being a weapon, not like the sword on the wall or her mother's hand-to-hand skills or her brother's toy phaser. She liked the feel of the words in her mind, how they sounded spilling off her tongue, and her abuelo wanted to teach her, so she learned, but it was really just a game to her.

When she was ten, she watched her off-duty mother arrest an armed bank robber (who she later learned was high as a kite on at least one illegal substance, and quite possibly was seeing them not as humans but as landsquid or unicorns or something). That day, she understood what her abuelo had meant.

It was Saturday, and the two of them were running errands. She didn't usually have the "wrong time wrong place" curse that most of her colleagues at the station seemed to suffer from, but today she was at the bank, both her and Nyota's arms loaded with groceries, and a bank robber was there too. Even off duty, she was a police officer, so she stepped up calmly when he shouted at everyone to get down while waving a phaser. Nyota watched, terrified and silent with a bunch of lettuce brushing her chin, as her mother talked to the man, calm and unyielding. And when he started swearing in French, her mother just switched to French and kept talking, hands open and body completely vulnerable to the phaser waving at her chest.

After twenty minutes (according to the clock; to Nyota, it might as well have been an eternity), the man nodded once, placed the phaser in her mother's waiting palm, and the two of them walked out together so she could escort him to the station. Her mom had glanced at her quickly, and Nyota understood immediately she should wait here until her mom came back.

One of the bank tellers tried to buy her an ice cream, but Nyota didn't want something sweet; she tried her own weapons, big brown eyes and a polite "please." She managed to get a coffee, not the free replicated swill for the patrons, but the real brewed stuff the branch manager drank. And then she sat on a bench, surrounded by groceries, until her mom came back, all nervous energy and worry lines.

"Nyota! Are you okay?"

This woman, beautiful even when her face was nothing but concern and stress, with a tea stain dark like dried blood on her shoulder, was who Nyota recognized from home, always talking about Calculus scores and voice lessons and arguing quietly on the phone about bills and mortgages when she thought Nyota and her brother couldn't hear. She didn't look anything like the woman Nyota had seen a few minutes ago, strong and calm as the ocean, a warrior goddess standing with nothing but words to defend herself and others. Nyota adored both of them, but she wanted BE the second one, the one she didn't know existed until an hour ago.

"Mom," she said seriously, "I love you."

\--------------

 

Her informal mission statement (uttered when she was six and too young to understand how mission statements traditionally use double-speak to cover their own unknown future, stripping themselves of all directness and beauty) had become a kind of catchphrase in her and her grandfather's relationship; her eager, unplanned explanation of her goals seemed to have struck him, and he never let her forget it. Luckily, her goals never really changed, even when her vocabulary expanded so that she could have phrased it more formally should she wish.

After the numbers and greetings, that statement was the first thing he taught her to say in Swahili, and then in all the languages after that, Korean and Vulcan and German and Arabic and Mandarin and Orion. The syllables sounded different in every language, clear and logical at times, silky and seductive as a desert wind in others, but they always felt the same, like steel and water, clear and inexorable and comforting.

After she started the third language (Orion), at age nine, she started to see not just the words but the way they were connected to give meaning; she didn't know how how to describe it, but when she'd asked if he also saw "the lego blocks underneath the words" he smiled the biggest smile she'd ever seen and gave her a giant hug.

"Mongoose," he said into her hair, "if you understand that already, I have no doubt the universe needs to watch out. You're coming for them in no time!" And then he handed her a beginners linguistics book for high school students. It had dust on it, as if it had been on the shelf for a year or two, but her name was already written inside the cover in her grandfather's crisp script. His own name was printed on the outside, where he was listed as editor.

When she graduated from high school (top of her class, and a year early) her gift from him was a gorgeous red leather notebook, filled with real paper, and embossed with the now-familiar phrase, this time in the first language they'd shared, even before Standard: "Proteger la tierra de los extraterrestres malos y ayudarnos volverse amigos con los buenos. Y los protegeré también."

She'd lost count of the times she'd spent absently tracing the curving cursive of those letters as she listened to lectures and brainstormed for projects and decided that her feet on the ground alongside Earth's best wasn't enough for her, that she was going to the stars.

When she told him her plan to serve on the federation's flagship, Abuelo had just laughed. "You're just now realizing that? I've known you belonged to the stars since you were six."

Her grandfather died two months before she graduated from university. He'd been with her via holoscreen when she opened her acceptance to Starfleet's xenolinguistics track, and he'd been as cheerful, playful and proud as ever. A week later, she'd gotten the call from her mother, solemn and shocked. It'd been peaceful, a stroke in his sleep.

Nyota had listened quietly to the officials reciting his accomplishments at the public memorial ceremony, hand gripping her mother's calmly.

She had given the eulogy herself at the private wake. Nyota hadn't realized it, but she'd been grasping for the best word, whatever it was, wherever it came from, to say exactly who her grandfather was and how the world had been enriched by his existence. Her brother had counted nine different languages as she spoke, all laid over a core of Spanish-language syntax. No one else in the audience had been able to understand every word, but the sentiments had been so crisp and alive that the words were just the vehicle to carry them. The room of twenty had used up two boxes of tissue before it was over, even if most of them were bittersweet tears pulled from funny, joyful memories, not sadness.

Nyota thought her grandfather would see that fact as both a funny joke and a touching tribute.

\----------------

By now, it was her personal ritual when she began to study a new language: Open the digital notebook she was dedicating to it, and leave the first page empty until she was comfortable enough with the shape of the letters, knew the rhythm of the grammar well enough to write the phrase clearly, like a title. Like a thesis. Like a mission.

When her classmates borrowed her notes, they rarely noticed it, and when they did, they never said anything about it.

Except for Gaila. Gaila had asked her what it was when they were prepping for their end of term project first year, and for the first time in years, Nyota's words failed her.

"It's...my grandfather taught me to write that. It's just a thing now, like Hello World that all the computer geeks do."

It both was and wasn't like "Hello World," and she knew it. But she didn't have any other way to explain this phrase, not without explaining her grandfather and her mother and years and years of learning, of dreaming, of becoming. Of all the things waiting for her out among the stars.

Gaila seemed to understand, though; she grabbed her pencil case and pulled out a tiny screwdriver, worn with a chipped handle that looked a little too small for adult hands, even tiny hands like Gaila's.

"I use this to open every new piece of equipment I work on. Even when I'm not supposed to take it apart."

She laughs, a joyful, silvery sound.

"Us sailors have our traditions, don't we? Even when we're sailing the stars."

Nyota wished Gaila could have met her abuelo. They both had such an uncanny ability to see straight to the heart of the thing, past all the things that made it tick and into the reasons that it kept ticking.

A skill like that, and you could conquer the galaxy. Not that you would want to, not when you've seen the beauty in why it keeps ticking along.

\-------------------

When she's first working on learning her second dialect of Romulan, she encounters a problem trying to craft the mission statement. Words are slippery, protean things that won't stay in place were you to nail them down, and some concepts are trickier than others. For Romulans, apparently one of those tricky concepts is the idea of friendship. She's found twenty-three different words for becoming friends, but they all carry connotations of alliances, with varying degrees of breakability and clan mergers. None of them are really what she's looking for.

(Sure, Starfleet’s mission would probably find an alliance-friendship perfectly acceptable, but she couldn’t let go of the six-year-old’s notion of friendship, where you broke a single cookie in half to share, not because the rules said to, but because they were your friend, and that’s what friends do. So an alliance-friendship wasn’t enough, not for her mission statement.)

She goes to her T.A. for help, phrasing it as a translation concern. She's never talked to him outside of class discussion, but he's stated that people should visit his office if they have questions related to the course, and Nyota has a regrettable tendency to take people seriously when they say things like that.

He's a Vulcan, and young even by human standards; Gaila had been curious and looked him up once, and learned that he's only a few years older than them, accomplished in the sciences, and Amanda Grayson's son to boot. No wonder he was TAing for a languages course even though he had completed a science and command track.

When she knocks on the open door to his office, he looks up from his datapad quickly but without the jerk that would definitely indicate surprise. His face, however, was shockingly expressive for all of its lack of expression. He clearly had no idea why anyone would be at his office, let alone her, nor does he have a particularly strong sense of what one does when a student visits during office hours.

Surely she can't be the first one? He's intimidating in class, sure, but not so much so that you should be scared to go to his office.

Well, not so much that SHE'D be scared to. She sometimes thinks her fear meter is a little broken, at least when it comes to accomplishing her goals.

His voice betrays none of the uncertainty that she sees, however. "Cadet Uhura. Come in. Is there something I can assist you with?"

She steps forward two paces--not enough to put her in front of his desk, certainly not enough for her to sit in the mismatched chair placed next to the pristine desk for the nonexistent visitors he has, but enough to be totally inside the tiny office.

"I'm...sir, I'm working on a translation project as extra practice with the Romulan dialect we are studying. I'm having trouble with a particular term and was hoping you could help."

His expression didn't change, but his head tilted slightly; she recognized that gesture from class as a sign of curiosity. Oh yeah, he'd help.

"I can try to assist. What term?"

She smiles slightly, her datapad clutched close to her chest. "To become friends, sir."

His response is to list the three most common words for friendship in the dialect, two of them identical to the other dialect she already knows. He knows she knows them, too; her exam score had been the highest in the class.

By now, of course, she pays as much attention to nonverbal communication as verbal. His eyebrows twitch slightly; she interprets it to mean he feels an undercurrent of hidden motives, but he isn't sure what they are.

She tries to explain as clearly as she can without giving away her real need for the word. "I already tried those, sir, but their connotations are all wrong. In the passage I'm working on, it doesn't mean alliance building--that's too impersonal to accurately represent the idea."

He nodded once, seeming to relax minutely without changing his expression or posture in the slightest. "Why are the words rooted in marriage customs also inadequate?"

He says it almost curiously, as if he knows she's tried those words too and found them wrong, and if he can just understand why, he can find the perfect word for her.

"Like the alliance-friendships, the marriage-friendships and family-tie-friends are rooted in a formal relationship and depend on that formal connection as the source of the...amiability." She pauses, suddenly sharply aware of the Vulcan tendency to classify and categorize everything as a way of giving meaning and significance, a trait that seems to run as deeply as breathing for them. She certainly doesn't want to imply that the bonds his culture cherishes are in any way lesser or inadequate. "What I...what the passage is trying to describe is a thing that doesn't necessarily fit into any conventional or formal bond, but rather one where the...affection and mutual regard spring from shared experiences, not culturally imposed obligation. I'm having a difficult time finding a word that allows an equal depth of connection without a formal social structure for that connection as a prerequisite to forming it."

He doesn't say anything for a moment, just watches her face carefully. Nyota wonders if she's blushing. It doesn't feel like it, but it's possible. Somehow she manages to hold his gaze.

Eventually, he speaks. "You are aware from class, of course, that Romulan society is highly structured. It is possible the word you are looking for does not exist in their language."

She already knows that. She also knows it's not true. All known sapient social species who don't operate as a hive form bonds of affection between individuals as an evolutionary quirk; while its significance and effect vary extensively, its existence doesn't. She doesn't believe Romulans don't become friends with each other when they spend time together doing...whatever it is that Romulans do when they're not chasing Federation starships around the galaxy. Eating or building houses or playing games as children.

He continues talking. "However, you speak of shared experience as the source of the friendship. Perhaps one of the words related to peer connections would suffice. I suggest you investigate the comrades-in-arms family of terms."

She tried not to laugh at that. Ever the teacher, refusing to just give her an answer when she can look it up herself.

Still, he's right--she'd skipped over that whole section because it was in the military hierarchy section, but...different kinds of beings, helping each other discover and defend the universe? Comrade-in-arms was a fantastic word for it, even in Standard.

She found herself smiling slightly at how perfectly the idea fit. "Such an experience would certainly help form a connection similar to what the passage describes. I will investigate further. Thank you."

The commander tilts his head slightly, and it seems almost like a dismissal, but he seems to be waiting for something else. She's not sure what.

"Cadet. How language reflects views of friendship in Romulan society would make an excellent final project, should you wish to pursue such a topic."

That surprises her, and she's sure it shows on her face. Her TA had never given anyone advice about what kind of project to pursue, as far as she knew.

(She remembered another student asking for help choosing a topic in class and getting a verbal tongue-lashing all the more vicious for being done in front of everyone. Actually, if she remembers correctly, that student had ultimately chosen to do a project on insults. She'd initially thought it had just been an excuse to include as many curse words as possible in a formal paper without getting in trouble, but now she wondered if that had been a result of an intentional albeit unconventional teaching moment.)

"Thank you, sir. I've always been interested in learning more about how friendships function across different cultures and species."

He nods once, and this time it is a clear dismissal, even though he doesn't turn his eyes back to the datapad.

She smiles and nods back, then turns and leaves, her hair brushing the doorway with the momentum of her pivot.

She needs to look at her textbook again, especially the section on military hierarchical vocabulary.

\---------------

She later realizes that interaction could have been seen in a very different way. She feels a slight blush as she sits in the library, wondering if he had interpreted her comment as an intention of some kind, as a come-on.

Not that she's particularly opposed to that interpretation, honestly; although she hadn't intended it as an offer to become better acquainted, she wouldn't mind. He is brilliant. And, as Gaila puts it, smoking hot.

\----------------

 

The second time she knocks on the office doorway, she gets the same non-surprised surprised jerk, but not the “why the hell are you here” vibe. “Cadet Uhura. How can I assist you?” From him, that comes across as a warm welcome.

“I just had an idea about the Klingon syntax project I wanted to discuss, if you have a few moments.”

He set the datapad aside and actually gestured to the chair next to the desk. “I do.”

\---------------------

The third time she came to his office, she brought them both tea from the corner shop. He doesn’t say thank you, but he inclined his head meaningfully and wrapped both of his elegant hands around it, soaking up the warmth.

She counts it as one all the same.

\-------------------

The first time she actually got a genuine facial expression out of him, it was one of uncertainty mixed with curiosity and warmth. That he would show such things to her, let alone feel them, left her...shocked. And pleased.

They’d been talking until right before class, so they were going to walk together to the lecture hall. Of course, it being San Francisco, it had just started to rain, so they were sharing an umbrella from his office. He was holding it, with a perfect gentlemanly air (Amanda Grayson was almost certainly responsible for that, she thought).

Suddenly his comm link buzzed, and without a thought she reached out to take the umbrella so he could answer it, and their fingers brushed.

It was electric.

She had only felt a spark, physical or metaphorical, she wasn’t sure. She knew, however, that Vulcans were touch telepaths. She wondered what that momentary glimpse had given him; she certainly wasn’t brave enough to ask.

His eyes on her seemed momentarily as open as a book, wide and brown. His eyebrows arched slightly, his mouth open just a bit. They just looked at each other for a long moment.

His comm link buzzed again, and the spell was broken. He spoke briefly to whoever was on the line--she guessed Captain Pike, given his tone and manner--while she carried the umbrella, arm held awkwardly high to account for his height.

In class, it was as if it had never happened. Nonetheless, Nyota couldn’t forget the moment his eyes widened like windows big enough to dive through, into the universe behind them.

\------------------------

She meets James T. Kirk the night before she’s shipping off for her second year at the academy. She doesn’t remember his name the next day when she sees him on the transport, but she definitely recognizes his face, eyes a startling blue even more remarkable when they can focus.

She doesn’t really think about him, except to do what she can to avoid him. It shouldn’t be that hard--after all, she’s a second-year now, and a different track besides.

Except that he shows up in Xenolinguistics club, and Gaila brings him home at least once that she knows of, so she finds she can’t avoid him as easily as she wants. And so she learns his name, and learns that his ego when sober is just as big as when he’s drunk, maybe bigger.

She learns that he is a fast learner--so fast she’s pretty sure he has either a partially eidetic memory or latent psi abilities--and that he is utterly convinced that the rules don’t apply to him. That he hates the idea of cruising through on his father’s name, but that he doesn’t always see it when it’s happening. He’s an odd creature, all broken pieces and unrealized privilege, desperate for acceptance while disdaining every social convention except the ones that get him laid, blessed and cursed by luck in one blow. Just being in the same room with him sets her teeth on edge.

She still finds him almost unbelievably annoying, and she goes out of the way to let him know with every bit of nonverbal communication she can, and a fair amount of verbal speech, too.

What she doesn’t show is that, even though she kind of hates him, and she definitely doesn’t respect him, she knows him now, and grudgingly she does (to herself alone) recognize his intelligence, his intuition. That even though she doesn’t like him, she understands why Gaila does. And it’s nothing to do with his baby blues.

\----------------------

After the second year, cadets spend their time half in class and half in a sort of internship situation, according to their track. Everyone does a short rotation in the core areas--one month each in medical, combat, engineering, science, administration--but beyond that, it’s specialty driven.

She does three months in the diplomatic offices--she knows that will be a necessary component of her application for the Enterprise. But pretty soon, translating meeting invitations and news reports isn’t enough, and she applies for a transfer in her fourth year. With her advisor’s recommendation and a letter from Commander Spock, who she has continued to speak to regularly after the class finished, she manages to get into the intelligence division.

She loves everything about it.

\------------------

The intelligence division also gives her a glimpse of just how extraordinary Commander Spock is, and how...well, she would say ‘human’ but it’s not that, not that at all. It’s more that even though his mind is incredibly bright and he’s able to make exceptionally accurate deductions from a paucity of evidence, even about human actions and behaviors, he’s also surprisingly stupid at times at understanding simple social cues. That he hasn’t spoken to his father in six years, but he sends a subspace message to his mother every Sunday. That while Vulcans sleep far less than humans, if he does get woken mid-REM (as happened the one time they intercepted the urgent Vulcan medical transport message at 4 a.m.), he has sleep in his eyes and his hair sticks up at the back.

By now, she considers them friends, despite the difference in rank, and she’s certain he does too, although he’s never spoken of it directly. He still calls her Cadet Uhura, even when it’s just the two of them, at the coffee shop or in the briefing room at the intelligence compound, late at night.

Occasionally, she notices him watching her. She can’t tell what he’s thinking. She watches him sometimes, too. She wonders if he notices that. He seems to notice everything else.

\---------------------

The third time that she gets home late to find a different stranger not-asleep in her own bed, she has an epic fight with Gaila. They’d been roommates their entire time at Starfleet, and generally they got along well. She liked how Gaila didn’t hide who she was, what she wanted, how she laughed loudly and genuinely. How she takes apart every piece of equipment she finds so she can understand how it works, and assumes the whole world could be understood just as easily, if you could only pry it open with her tiny little screwdriver.

Nyota did not, however, like finding fluids of unknown origin on her own sheets. Seriously. There were motels for those sorts of things. There was a whole row of them just off-base. She knew, because she had to walk past them to get back to the main campus from the intelligence building, which was off-site.

Gaila seemed genuinely contrite about using Uhura’s bed. She promised not to bring boys back to their room anymore.

The next morning, Gaila had an early class and wasn’t around when Nyota woke up, but there was an insulated thermos of the good coffee waiting for her, the one that cost an arm and a leg and she only bought on special occasions. There was note on Gaila’s desk, too, in her neat engineer’s block writing: “Note to self: Make them kick their roommates out. No more being the one inconvenienced. Less to clean that way, too!” She’d ended it with a little smiley face.

Nyota felt incredibly lucky that Gaila was her best friend.

\------------------------

One cold autumn night, after the late shift at the intelligence center, she was walking home, shivering a bit in her inadequate jacket as she walked past the row of motels. As usual, there were a few men loitering outside, cigarettes in hand, and as usual, she got a catcall or two. She ignored them, as usual. It felt familiar, like a play they’d been acting out for years.

Unusually, however, one man didn’t seem content to let her walk past as if she were deaf. He came over to her, grabbed her wrist. “Hey baby, can’t you take a compliment? Let me show you how pretty you are.” Up close, he smelled of alcohol, urine, and pot.

She had always been a quick study at sizing up situations like this, at turning away persistent drunk admirers. Cursing could turn this violent--he’d already crossed a line by grabbing her wrist--but a polite response should be enough for him not to follow her if she walked off quickly. She wouldn’t go straight home, not until she was sure he wouldn’t follow, but a quick detour to the library would be enough for her to feel secure.

“Sorry, can’t. Have a good evening.” She calmly twist-jerked her arm out of his hand and walked off, shoulders tight but her pace even as she listened carefully. No footsteps. Good.

As she bypassed the sidewalk to her dorm building in favor of the one headed to the library, she saw something out of the corner of her eye. It’s probably a cat, she thought.

It wasn’t a cat.

She actually jumped when a human-sized shadow stepped out from next to a building, less than a meter from her. She managed not to shriek, though, and was glad she didn’t when he moved forward into the light and she realized it was Commander Spock.

He was looking oddly serious and studying her face carefully. “I had not expected to see you here, as you had informed me not twenty minutes ago you were going to your dormitory, which is, indeed, the opposite direction.”

Nyota still had a hand to her chest in surprise. “No, I...I had to...it’s fine. I’ll be home soon enough.”

She didn’t have any way to explain where she was going. It was something every woman she knew would understand without asking, and something few men did, even after it had been explained, and she didn’t want him to think she felt weak or vulnerable. That she needed some kind of protector. She didn’t. It was just common sense, probably overly cautious anyway.

He shifted forward again, and now she could easily read the concern in his face. “I feel I must inform you that it would be no inconvenience for me to escort you back to campus on nights when you work late, as usually I am returning at the same time anyway. Or a shuttle could be arranged, should you prefer not to walk in my company at this hour.”

He must have seen it. She felt embarrassed, then wondered why. She’d done nothing to be ashamed of; she wouldn’t even have remembered the encounter tomorrow, except that he was asking about it, in his direct, oblique way. That he was showing his concern by offering something she’d neither asked for nor wanted.

She wondered if he reacted this way when his mother was slighted in his presence. It being Vulcan, the attacks were probably against her emotions, her intelligence, not her sexuality, but Nyota had seen enough of the world to understand that it was really just a different version of the same story. Someone as perceptive as Spock couldn’t have missed it, not all the time anyway.

Apparently, she’d stayed there for too long without responding. His face shifted into a different non-expression, and he started to take a step back. “My apologies. I appear to have overstepped the boundaries of our friendship. Have a pleasant evening.”

Him finally acknowledging their friendship was enough to startle her into action. She jumped forward, retaking the ground that he’d ceded. “No---Spock, no. That’s not it at all. I just...I wish you hadn’t seen that, is all. I’m fine.” As far as sensible responses went, she knows she’s done better. But it seems like it was enough. She hadn’t intended to call him by his given name, but she doesn’t regret doing it, nor does he act like she’s presumed too much. That hurt look in his eyes fades a bit, leaving just the concern which she now suspects is not going anywhere.

Out of the blue, she feels a wave of the clarity she gets when she first writes her mission statement in a new language: centered and brave, certain of herself and what she’s doing, where she’s going, how she’s getting there. She’s starting to realize that who she gets there with is part of her story, too, and she wants to tell him that.

What she says is, “When we leave at the same time, I’d be happy to walk with you.” She reaches out, brushes her fingertips against his. “But because I enjoy your company, not because I need your protection.”

She hopes his touch telepathy picks up on all the things she can’t say.

She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, either, just smiles and turns, walking with the same assured pace, directly back to her dorm building without looking back, without looking around corners.

For a moment she’d forgotten it, but she’s Nyota Uhura. A drunk in the shadows is no match for her; no sense in giving the world the delusion that she’d flinch, not even for a moment.

\--------------------

After that night, things change between them.

They walk back to campus together two or three times a week, but she still walks back on her own just as often. She learns more about him, because he can apparently be quite comfortable with small talk when he wants to be, speaking of books and music and, once, a soccer match he’d attended that past weekend.

She’s not as surprised as she should be by how many things they have in common.

When she passes him a datapad, their fingers brush almost all the time. When he hands her a coffee, she feels as warmed by the look in his eyes as by the cup itself. She can feel something starting to build, like a storm on the horizon.

She doesn’t know what it is, but it doesn’t scare her. She’s rather looking forward to meeting it when it arrives.

\----------------------

It’s an evening in late January when it finally does. They are the only two on shift at the intelligence center, and they’re arguing--actually arguing--about the best way to interpret a coded phrase in the latest intercepted Romulan transmission.

Eventually, she’s had enough. “Those Romulan settlers are going to get left to the mercy of the pirates in that area! This message proves it. It’s NOT about an alliance, not a true one. This word is only used for friends one intends to betray eventually. You KNOW I know this. So send the report already and come get ice cream with me.”

Spock just blinks for a moment. “You...you do have an unparalleled understanding of Romulan friendship vocabulary.”

And she’s won. She’s actually rather surprised it’s that easy.

He reaches out to the datapad still held in her hands, but instead of taking it from her, he just steps forward into her space and signs quickly, his shoulder brushing her inner arm as he clicks “Send.” She can’t take her eyes of his face, and it’s an electric shock when his eyes met hers.

She’s pretty certain she’s the one who bridges the last of the gap, even though it seems like he’d already crossed it by invading her space, the datapad still clutched in all four hands.

His lips on hers are warm and dry, and suddenly it’s her whole world. She pulls him to her, not even wincing as she hears the datapad hit the floor with a thick thud. She’s sandwiched between the desk and him, solid and warm and all but swallowing her in his arms as they kiss.

She can feel it when the situation reaches his brain; he pulls back but doesn’t let go entirely, breath coming quickly and his cheeks flushed green. By now she can read his face easily, and he looks...uncertain. But not unhappy. She sees something that on any human she would call lust.

A slight shake of his head, as if to clear it; it’s the most human gesture she’s ever seen him make, and then his arms are at his sides, leaving her feeling suddenly cold. “Cadet...Cadet Uhura. I find I must apo--”

She cuts him off the only way she can think to, by placing a finger over his lips.

“Commander. You have nothing to apologize for, so don’t you dare. Now, let’s go get my ice cream. Acceptable?”

He just nods, slowly. Her finger is still pressed against his lips lightly, and his face grows even more green. It makes something low in her abdomen tighten. If she had any doubts earlier about what she wanted, they’re gone now. She’s all but gleeful that he obviously wants the same thing.

After a long moment, she drops her hand, grabbing her coat behind her without breaking eye contact. She can feel her lips curving, her voice a little throaty. “Come on, commander. We’ve got places to be.”

They walk shoulder to shoulder, passing the ice cream parlor without a glance, not stopping or speaking all the way to the building housing Spock’s small studio. Neither say a word or look at each other as they take the elevator, as they wait for the door lock to recognize Spock’s thumbprint. And then they’re inside, the door closed behind her, the lights still off, and their eyes meet.

Turns out they don’t need words right now, either.

\------------------------

Nyota doesn’t tell anyone about her and Spock, not even Gaila. It’s not just that night, either. Once turns into again turns into two or three times a week, without them even discussing it. They don’t just sleep together, either; they get lunch, at least once a week. They practice music, her singing and him on the lyre. Sometimes they just sit and read next to each other on the spartan couch, barely touching, even at the end of the night. She’s a little bit surprised when, four months in, she realizes this is an actual relationship they have--not just fucking, not friends with benefits, but something real, something that could light up the world or burn it down, depending on how they handle it. Strike that--she’s not surprised, she’s terrified, and she goes two days without answering his comms until he shows up unexpectedly at her dorm, a peace offering of pistachio ice cream in hand, even though he has no idea what he did wrong.

They take a walk along the bay and she explains that she was surprised by the depths of her emotions, borrowing words from Vulcan here and there in their conversation. She finds it’s surprisingly easy to explain how powerful and overwhelming emotions can be in their language, and she’s reminded of the time before Surak, before Vulcan fierceness had been channeled into the orderly fields of logic and was still wild enough to rip whole planets to shreds.

She suspects Spock understands how terrified she feels even more than she does.

She knows he understands that she wants it anyway, though.

He doesn’t have the right words to share his own emotions, she can tell, but he mumbles through enough for her to understand that he, also, holds her in “the highest regard” and has no intention of “abandoning this fulfilling interchange anytime soon or due to any immediately foreseeable circumstances.” Her Spock-to-Standard translator says that means he loves her and wants to be with her forever, which is not unlike how she’s feeling, so she just takes his hand and smiles, knowing he’s reading her face and her feelings and not caring one whit who sees it at that moment.

\---------------------

And then the world ends. Not her world, but his.

\---------------------

Who is she kidding? Her world may not have ended quite as literally as his, but it’s not like she’s ever going to be the same after she watched a planet get sucked into a black hole right in front of her.

\---------------------

When they finally get back to Earth, after everything, she turns the lights on in her empty dorm room (Gaila is still in medical after receiving severe burns in the so-called Battle of Vulcan), and the first thing she sees is her red leather notebook sitting on her desk, her childish words of hope engraved and worn from the oil in her fingers repeatedly tracing over them.

And that’s enough to send her over the edge. She is hurling the notebook at the wall, shrieking in rage as she shoves everything on her desk onto the floor. She feels a fierce delight as the coffee mug full of pencils shatters on impact.

She realizes she’s curled up on the floor crying, crying and sobbing and laughing all at once. She can’t believe she was ever so young as to believe that she would be enough to protect what she loved, as if the force of her will alone would be enough to save what she cherishes simply at her word. It hadn’t saved eleven Federation ships, it hadn’t saved Vulcan, hadn’t done anything. It hadn’t even saved her.

….Except that it had. Her words--and the fact that she deserved it; a small part of her was still furious Spock had tried to keep her away for even a second--had gotten her onto the Enterprise. Her words in support of Kirk’s outlandish theory had kept the shields up when they exited warp. Without that, she’d be dead. They’d all be dead. Earth would be a gaping empty hole in space right now. She’d hadn’t been able to save everyone, but those that they could, they had saved in part because of her, definitely because of her team and how they worked together.

And what had not been lost? That was still worth a thousand suns.

The tears weren’t stopping, but the feeling of being out of control was fading into that level calm she’d felt on the bridge in the middle of the firefight. Things weren’t okay, not even a bit. But she was Nyota Uhura, and the enemy was clearly defined; she knew who she was, and what she was doing, and how she was going to get there. She even know who she was going there with, now, and damned if she was going to let the fact that apparently Jim Kirk was a part of it spoil it.

She grabbed the red leather journal and a pen from the mess on the floor, then started to write, writing the same thing over and over, in every language she knew. She filled pages and pages with the same story, different words, over and over until it filled her brain, not drowning her grief but growing stronger because of it.

These weren’t the words of a child, not anymore. These were the words of a woman who’d seen what happens when someone lets their grief consume them, blotting out everything they were and swallowing everything they’d held dear. She would not become that person. She would look at the galaxy with her head held high and her eyes clear, seeking out friends and standing against those who meant harm to her or hers.

Her pen kept moving, words for her grief and resolve spilling over the page like a black hole exploding light into space.

Eventually, she fell asleep, curled up on the floor, arms wrapped around the journal as if to protect it from harm.


	2. Chapter 2

She doesn’t know what happened exactly between Kirk and Spock, not on an emotional level; she just knows that at the beginning, Spock was ready to throw him in the brig--did actually throw him off the ship--and then somehow, by the end, they were comrades-in-arms, moving around the bridge in synchronized movements, communicating without words.

Spock never explains it to her, either.

He does explain, however, who a certain older Vulcan was, the story coming through in pieces as they lay in his bed one night, or what passes for night on a starship in deep space. He stares straight at the ceiling the whole time, not even glancing at her face beside him, his hand crushing hers where it lay on his chest.

She can only imagine what a mind trip that would be, to meet an older version of herself, looking old enough to be mistaken for her mother at a distance. Someone who knew you better than you knew yourself, because it was you, and yet not, all at once.

He also told her he had been planning to leave Starfleet (leave her, her mind screams) to help the Vulcan colony rebuild, but that he had talked himself out of it. The odd lilt to his voice when he says that makes her realize he was quoting the older version of himself, and the absurdity of the situation strikes her sharply. She starts to laugh.

That is enough, finally, to get his eyes off the ceiling and onto her, his eyes concerned as if worried for her sanity. She just keeps laughing quietly, not able to explain--knowing she didn’t need to, not really; he understands far better than she how insane the world is that he is quoting himself-not-himself making a bad joke.

His fingers brush her cheek, and she tries to focus her emotions enough so that he can see she understands his confusion, and also how torn he feels. She knows he loves his people, wants to do what needs to be done, now that they’ve been reduced so; she also knows they’ve given him nothing but grief, and that he’s never as happy as when he’s staring at a new science problem at his console, able to glance up at any moment and see her, meters away working quietly on something she loves, a mere turn of the head to see Kirk brooding in his chair, the star lines outside streaking in a never ending glitter, soothing as ocean waves.

He’d die inside if he left them now; but she knew it was killing him not to be on the colony, crafting buildings and logic from dust, saving or recreating what they can. No matter what move he makes, he betrays someone he loves, and in both choices, he betrays himself.

The push-pull of his dual heritage has always challenged him, she thinks, but never as it has now. But this is his burden--anything she does to help, aside from accepting him in his complexity, will just make it more difficult for him. So she pushes that feeling of acceptance at him through the fingers still resting on her face, and she sees the moment he receives it, as his eyes soften, and he pulls her in for a gentle kiss.

She thinks, briefly, of contacting the older version of Spock. But there’s nothing she needs from him, not really, and nothing to give, either. So she lets it be.

\-----------------------

The first time Gaila invites her to go to the Engineering department’s private party, she wants to refuse. She’s not an engineer, parties were never really her thing, and honestly, Scotty is a little scary. Gaila is having none of it.

“You’re going. I’ll be here at seven to get you. And don’t even think of not being here--I’m not above getting Jim to find you if I need to.”

Gaila was serious, too. She’d forgiven Kirk for Kobayashi Maru, and they were actually friends now. Nyota had no doubt Kirk would actually track her down if Gaila asked, and probably mortify both her and Spock in the process.

Nyota gave in to the inevitable. “Ok, fine. Is there a dress code?”

Gaila grinned. “Wear those sexy boots!”

“Gaila, I am not wearing those to Engineering. I’ll break an ankle and fall to my death.”

A giggle. “Not those sexy boots, the sexy I’m-a-badass-Starfleet-officer boots. The ones with the thing.”

Nyota is a little surprised that she actually parsed that correctly, but she knew immediately which pair of boots Gaila was talking about. They were pretty sexy, now that she thought about it.

“Fine. Now go--I’ve got to finish these reports before shift ends.”

At the party, Nyota is a little surprised at how comfortable she feels. The Engineering team is made up of around forty people, and she knows most of them already. They’re a bit odd, sure--the keg is operated by a robot someone built out of spare parts just for the heck of it, and which for some unknown reason people keep calling Wally--but odd in the honest, true-to-themselves way that has always made Nyota like people. It’s easy to see they consider themselves a family, and easy to get adopted into it as an honorary member.

She talks for almost an hour with Keenser and a pair of twins from Luna, before getting roped into the beer pong game on Scotty’s team. They win, and she finds herself caught up in a fierce hug from the Scotsman. He then promptly wanders off, his eyes alight and muttering something about the coolant systems.

Nyota meets Gaila’s eyes across the crowd and smiles her thanks; Gaila raises a red plastic cup in response before turning back to the besotted security team member she’s talking to.

Message received.

\------------------------

Of all the bonds that they form, alone in the black, she’s most surprised that she and McCoy get along.

He’d always been Kirk’s, from Day 1 on the transport, and that alone had been enough for her to steer clear of him whenever possible. His irascible temper didn’t do him any favors, either.

And yet, one day in the mess, as she was rolling her eyes at another of Kirk’s insane, unifocal plans regarding a hypothetical first contact that he tried to force onto her, she heard the doctor muttering under his breath about how Kirk was going to get himself killed one of these days and he wasn’t going to lift a damned finger to stop it.

She glanced at the doctor, unsure what he meant (the plan Kirk was outlining wasn’t actually dangerous to anything except sanity and the local flora), and he froze with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth when he noticed her look. Then he shrugged guiltily, took a sip, and spoke, directly to her this time.

“He’s not trying to get into your pants anymore, so I honestly don’t know why he keeps baiting you. But if you decide you’ve had enough and suckerpunch him, I’ll swear in the report that it was self-inflicted.”

That comment was enough for a sharp, pleasant laugh and her tray sliding closer to his. Kirk shot them a betrayed look then took his empty tray and left. First, they talked about how obnoxious the captain was (a favorite topic for both of them, apparently, although for very different reasons); then they talked about their last mission; then they talked about their homes, her brother and her two nieces, his Jo, who he clearly missed like another limb. He even pulled out a picture, and she really was the most darling thing, all blond pigtails and wide green eyes and a gap-toothed smile.

After that, she and McCoy got along well. They often communicated in sharp witticisms, but it seemed to suit them both. The comments were never barbed, and more than once she’d caught his eyes across the room and shared a moment of “How is this ridiculousness even happening?” that no one else seemed to appreciate the gravity of in such situations.

One day, they were sitting down in the mess, sharing one of those looks as Kirk was gesturing and talking with his mouth full, and she realized that she and the doctor were genuinely friends.

She was briefly horrified to realize that meant that, by the laws of friendship proxy observed by at least two Federation species, she was therefore also friends with James T. Kirk.

Somehow, she wasn’t quite as horrified as she imagined. And only partially because those same laws dictated they’d already long been friends through their mutual affection for Spock.

\-----------------------

She had known, almost since the Enterprise’s mission began, that Spock and the captain had what historical documents called a “bromance.” It was built on whatever had happened on Nero’s ship and everything that had happened since. She knew that they worked exceptionally well together in crisis situations, seeming to complement each other’s strategies and skills and communicating wordlessly.

(Her abuelo would have had a field day using them as a case study for communication techniques between individuals with drastically different psi levels and cultural backgrounds.)

She knew they trusted each other with their lives and the lives of the crew.

She knew they played chess surprisingly often; she knew that they had some kind of ongoing feud in the gym where Spock wiped the floors with Kirk every Wednesday without fail.

She knew Kirk confided in Spock, things he didn’t tell McCoy. She was almost certain Spock told him things he didn’t tell her.

She wasn’t jealous, not precisely. But she was...aware of it. Aware that she never wanted to be in a situation where Spock had to choose between her and James Kirk, and not just because those sorts of situations generally sucked. No, it was more that whatever his choice (and she honestly couldn't predict what it would be), they’d all lose.

To be clear: if it were a matter of the communications officer or the captain, she knew he’d choose the captain, and didn’t begrudge that--the ship came first, for all three of them. But if it came down to them, in particular, to Nyota or Jim, she didn’t know what would happen. She definitely didn’t want to find out.

It wasn’t much comfort to her, then, that she was 99.8% sure they weren’t sleeping together. That Spock, at least, wouldn’t even want to.

Still. She could see how much a solid friendship in addition to herself was good for Spock. She knew how reserved he was, how few people he chose to form a genuine connection with. So she did her best to encourage it in any way she could that didn’t actually involve spending any time with Kirk herself.

She loved Spock, but there were limits to what she was willing to do for him. She got more than enough of the James Kirk charm on the bridge. No way was she subjecting herself to it in her spare time, too.


	3. Chapter 3

This is the story of how she realized she no longer hated Jim Kirk.

They were in the back of beyond, a century-old mining colony set up in an asteroid belt on the edge of Orion space. They were officially there to drop off aid supplies and provide engineering support regarding the installation of some sort of fancy, non-red-matter-related drill. Unofficially, they were also collecting info on the colony’s communications abilities and possible contact with either Romulans or pirates. Apparently, this little nowheresville had pinged someone in Starfleet Intel’s radar something awful, and now the Enterprise was stuck out here sorting it out.

The asteroid belt was orbiting a rather pretty set of binary yellow dwarf stars, and she had to admit she’d spent almost two hours on the Officer’s observation deck, letting her face be bathed in the natural sunlight for the first time in six months.

She’d thought she’d been the only one there, but she heard something and turned to see Kirk sitting on a bench on the other side of the room, apparently just as surprised as she was to find someone else there.

He spoke first. You could always count on Jim Kirk to open his mouth. “Guess I’m not the only one missing sunny days at the beach, huh?”

She considers asking if he has read her file closely enough to know she spent the first seven years of her life in Puerto Rico, where her grandparents had lived. How she spent almost all summer in the humid heat, collecting crabs and seashells on the coast whenever her grandfather wasn’t teaching class or at a classified meeting. How she still sometimes dreams of salsa music keeping time with the waves, the smell of fried cod and tamarind heady on the air.

She wonders when a boy born in space and raised in Iowa even found the time to see an ocean, let alone learn to love it enough to miss it.

Mostly, she is just curious what she has to do to be on the away team. The observation deck is nice, but nothing compares to natural sunlight and a real breeze. Even without the water, she’d feel like she was in heaven.

\---------------------------------

The next morning, she learns she doesn’t have to do anything. Her name is listed as the communications officer assigned to the away team, along with three engineers and the captain. That’s unusual--she almost never goes on away missions, for whatever reason. But she’s thrilled enough not to question it. In the ready room after they’ve briefed the away team, and the engineers leave to go prepare their gear to beam down, Kirk catches her arm quickly. Spock watches from the other side of the room, his expression blank.

“Uhura. Can you hack their comms while we’re down there without them noticing?”

She’s a tiny bit surprised at how directly he asks her to do something that could so easily damage the fragile relationship these people have with the Federation. Not that he’d want it done, but that he’d ask her about it so brazenly.

She thinks for a moment. “Unlikely. I could definitely get in, but reports suggest their technological capabilities are advanced enough that they’d almost certainly notice what I was doing.”

Kirk’s face falls a bit, but he doesn’t really look surprised. He’s still holding her arm lightly. She wonders if he even notices.

She shifts slightly on her feet but doesn’t take her arm back. “If we could find some reason to need to use their consoles, I could probably piggyback at least some surface-level stuff into a comm here. I doubt I could get anything encrypted or really hidden that way, but at least it would be something.”

His face brightens immediately at this. She marvels a bit at how expressive his mercurial features are. It’s so different from Spock’s closed expressions that she almost finds it jarring.

“That, we can definitely do! I am an expert at ‘accidentally’ spilling drinks on carefully placed tricorders. We just need a signal. What would you like the magic words to be?”

Uhura wanted to tell him what a stupid idea it was, but she couldn’t. She could feel that glimmer of certainty, and she just knew this plan would work. Despite its ridiculousness. Probably because of it, honestly.

It was Spock who suggested a keyword, clearing his throat obviously as if he thought either of them had forgotten he was present. “Why not suggest that you must contact me immediately? The word ‘immediately’ will serve as the trigger phrase.”

Kirk laughs and drops her arm abruptly. “Yeah, sounds good. You know what we need. I’m gonna go get my gear. Meet you in the transporter room in twenty.”

He locked gazes with Spock for a long moment, but whatever they said, it was inaudible to Nyota, except his farewell phrase, uttered with a sharp nod. “Commander.”

For some reason, the air in the ready room felt heavy with tension when it was just the two of them there. Spock looked like he wanted to say something, but was reluctant to speak.

She decided to break the silence for him. Words were weapons, and she used hers wisely. “Spock. It’s a simple recon mission. We’ll be fine.” She knew better than to say nothing would go wrong. But saying they’d be fine? No problem. She’d make sure it was so.

That seemed to settle him. Instead of speaking, he just reached out and cupped her cheek for a long moment. When he did speak, it was just to say her name. “Nyota.”

Like with the captain earlier, she recognized it for what it was, a farewell. She nodded slightly, turning her face to kiss his palm softly then leaving without looking back.

She was the first one in the transporter room, bag slung over one shoulder and her tricorder in hand.

\---------------

The miners were an odd group. Around half were a humanoid species native to the nearby star system, notable for a prehensile, elephant-like trunk they had in addition to the two sets of arms. The rest of the miners were made up of nearly every known species, all sharing that same look of people who left home because somehow, for some reason, it was the wrong shape for them to fit in. The colony had the distinct air of a place where you didn’t ask questions about a person’s past, where you accepted the name they told you without question even though you didn’t believe it was the one they were born with. She wondered how many arrest warrants would be activated if they did a survey here, how many missing persons reports would finally be solved.

She wanted to curse a bit. Places like this were notorious for closing ranks against outsiders, particularly outsiders allied with government organizations. She’d be lucky to get them to tell her which way the bathroom was, let alone how their mining equipment functioned and what strange spaceships had come calling recently.

She met Kirk’s eyes across the dirty conference table and could tell he was thinking exactly the same thing. Well, they could do their best. Kirk had a lot of friends in low places, maybe they’d open up to him if they could set up the dynamic just right.

On that thought, he winked at her. Obviously. And lewdly. More lewdly than their first meeting, a lifetime ago in an Iowa dive. She couldn’t help it--she could feel her face fly into what was probably a grotesque expression of appalled and disgusted.

Kirk just laughed in a theatrically quiet way, and murmured to the being next to him, “See what I’ve got to put up with?”

The miner just nodded and raised its ears--the equivalent of a friendly smile in its species. He also handed Kirk a glass of murrtea, a tea popular in the nearby system..

He pointedly did not hand one to Nyota.

Kirk didn’t look back at her, but in her mind she could imagine him doing so, giving her another kind of wink, the one that spoke of conspiratorial intimacy, the one that meant ‘good job.’

It looked like they had already laid the foundation for Plan B, and apparently she was playing bad cop. She decided to take it as a compliment--she was a little scary, after all, and a backup plan is never a bad idea. Just in case Operation Coffee Spill backfired.

She almost wished she was surprised when it did, and spectacularly.

Oh, the first stages had gone exactly to plan.

Step 1) Try to get the miners to tell us who has been to the colony and what they’ve done there.  
Kirk had led their welcoming committee on a rather rambling path of small talk for around thirty minutes, in which time they were told that traders came only three times a Standard year (twice for private traders, once a year a Federation Mining Guild ship), the supplies were received regularly and in generally good condition, except for the milk which was invariably soured, that they had suffered no disasters of a natural or artificial variety in five years, and that no one new had moved to the colony in at least six months.

At least one of those things appeared to be a blatant lie, as there was still what was clearly a recent crack in the wall from some sort of seismic event, so newly patched she could still smell the neoplaster; she was sure if she touched it her finger would come away white. Still, what they lie to you about is as telling as what they don’t.

Step 2) Create a need to contact the ship and to use their communications console to do so.  
The junior engineer popped her head in as if on cue and said they were almost done assembling the drill, but that they wanted to run some numbers through Scotty before they turned it on. Something about the local gravity being different than anticipated.

Nyota nodded at her placed her tricorder on the edge of the table between herself and Kirk, then shifted as if to get something out of her bag. “Of course, Ensign Matthews. I’ll have Commander Spock contact Engineering immediately.”

Kirk took a sip of his murrtea then started coughing like it had gone down the wrong pipe. Nyota initially just looked at him, then felt her face pull into both worry and disgust. His face was starting to change color; she wondered if he really was choking.

McCoy would kill her if she let the captain die by choking on tea while trying to implement this stupid plan. She reached out to pound him on the back right at the same time he lunged forward to try to get some air.

Then there was lukewarm tea all over the table, her tricorder, and her skirt. The tricorder made a loud pop and then all the lights on it went out. Her skirt didn’t need to do anything to be obviously irreparable.

At least Kirk was still breathing.

He shot her a look of genuine apology even while loudly saying “Oh no! Sorry, I hope it doesn’t stain!” in an extremely non-genuine voice.

She found she didn’t have to dig very far for exasperation to color her tone. “It’s fine. I think the tricorder is finished, though, at least until we get back to the ship.”

She paused, but the miner’s didn’t offer their equipment. They also didn’t offer her a napkin, she noticed, even though there was a stack next to them.

Oh well. If you would receive, ask. “Gentlemen, I would appreciate being able to use your communications console for a moment to contact our ship.”

Their two hosts exchanged uneasy looks, but eventually the more talkative one said, “Fine.” He gestured to an elderly-looking console in the corner of the room, covered in what looked like at least a half-inch of soot.

Soot?

Nyota could have stopped her grimace if she wanted to, but she knew it would further their characterizations if she didn’t, so she let exactly how thrilled she was to be using the filthy equipment show on her face. It was turned on but running extremely slowly. Nyota typed quickly and waited until the lag had cleared enough for her to begin composing a short message to send through. There’s no way this equipment would handle a holocall; probably not even an audio one.

Luckily, sending a data message would allow her to attach a file or two if she could find one. She attached everything in the workstation’s temp folder with a few keyboard shortcuts without looking at what the files actually were, then sent it off immediately. It seemed to take forever for the message to send, but finally the slow rotating wheel turned into a paper airplane and the console beeped once.

She smiled, went back to the table, picking up a few napkins as she went by the miners. As she sat, she met Kirk’s eyes. “Done, sir.”

That was when everything went to hell.

The main lights blinked out and the emergency lights switched on, a flashing red light that kept time with the blaring siren. She thought she felt a rumble of thunder on the metal floor, but it could have been the miners leaping to their feet. They each had blasters--the one with four arms had three by himself--and they were both shouting over each other at her, at Kirk, at each other, one in Standard and the other in an old-fashioned Orion dialect that was nearly unrecognizable.

Despite the overlapping cacophony of sounds, she was able to get the general gist--accusations of them being spies, of the equipment being sabotaged, and something about waking a sleeping dragon.

She hoped that last was metaphorical, but she wasn’t feeling particularly lucky so far.

She and Kirk both had their hands in the air when another miner ran in. He barked a few words at the other two--something about a holding cell--and then took off again. Nyota was unsurprised to find them ushered down a corridor--the fact that it was deserted was a little surprising; she’d rather expected the noise and flashing lights to be accompanied by sentient chaos as well, but it was almost eerie how abandoned the building felt. They went down two sublevels, then she found herself bumping into Kirk as she was shoved through a narrow doorway, the door slamming shut behind her.

After a moment, they untangled themselves and examined the room. Well, room was perhaps a bit generous; it was an enclosed area about the size of a bathroom. On a shuttlecraft. She estimated the longest side to be under a meter long. It had a foot-tall set of bars running above the doorway, but otherwise the walls were a matte black that was smooth and mirrorlike in the brightly lit room. An odd burning smell made her nostrils itch.

Kirk shook his head once, then immediately started running his hands over the boundaries of the door as he talked.

“Shit. Sorry about your skirt, Uhura. What the hell is going on? Did you understand what they were talking about? I only got something about spies for the dragon.” He sniffed. ”And I’m a little concerned about that burning smell--it’s not just me, right? You smell it too?”

Nyota did, in fact, smell it. She’d been trying not to think about it too much in favor of examining the room for a way out. “It’s not just you, Captain. I think they were saying separate things, about us being spies who were going to wake up the dragon. Possibly that’s a nickname for a geological feature? There was soot on the console, cracks in the walls. They could have been dealing with volcanic activity recently.We have no reason to believe they were referencing a living being.”

She KNEW better than to say things like that. So she almost wasn’t surprised when she heard a loud shrieking roar in the distance that was definitely not mechanical in nature.

Startled into a shriek of her own, sure, but not really surprised. Because this was her life. And apparently that meant she was locked in an overlit closet with Jim Kirk until a dragon came to eat them.

Kirk looked over his shoulder at her, meeting her eyes with a brash grin. “See, I knew we’d have fun on this mission!”

She didn’t bother to respond.

She was thinking quickly. The room was empty--no tables, no wall consoles, no cameras. The door didn’t even have a handle or hinges. Just the odd air vents at the top and the two of them, blinking against the light.

Wait. She could feel something tickling her brain, something that smelled of the ocean and her childhood, of..that was it. Of watching classic cop shows with her grandmother in the afternoons. The smooth walls, the bright lights, even when the corridor outside had been only dimly lit with the red emergency lighting.

“Kirk!” she started to reach for his shoulder, but he was already up, giving her as much personal space as was possible in the small area. She met his eyes. “Did you ever watch Law & Order as a kid?” She gestured with her chin at the smooth black wall behind him.

She could tell the exact moment he understood what she was trying to say. They looked in unison at the wall. She could almost see him evaluating the amount of force necessary to break it--if, indeed, it actually was some kind of glass.

He grabbed her shoulders, but it was only to push her against the far wall, his hands gone almost as soon as she noticed them. “Watch out!” he advised, and pulled his hand back.

Oh my god, she thought. This man is our captain. We are all going to die. “Wait!” She hissed, grabbing his outstretched elbow.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. She could practically hear his “What?”

She unslung the nonfunctional tricorder from her shoulder. “Here. Momentum will give you more force as well as prevent unnecessary damage to your hands.” She paused, but it couldn’t be helped. “You idiot.”

Kirk just grinned, hefting the tricorder strap once as if to get a sense of the weight and balance.

Then--only then--did he surprise her. He pulled her forward and wrapped his arms around her. She was getting her arms up to push him away when he pivoted them both, one arm outstretched so the tricorder swung wide, bashing the wall behind him as he shielded her from any splinters of glass with his body.

“Ow,” he said as she pushed him away and gave him a semi-serious punch to the arm.

“Don’t ever do that again,” she replied calmly as she looked over his shoulder to assess the damage. The wall had a shattered impact mark, a spiderweb of cracks like a car windshield. She couldn’t see anything on the other side, but it probably wasn’t a stone wall, not with that sort of shatter pattern.

She grabbed the tricorder out of Kirk’s hand and swung directly at the impact center, covering her eyes with her free hand.

On the third impact, it broke, and there was a delicate tinkle as pieces of glass fell to the floor, leaving a baseball-shaped hole which they both bent to peer through, cheeks radiating heat but not touching.

On the other side was a room, empty except for a table and a few chairs. She thought there might be a console in the corner, but she couldn’t be sure from this angle.

Kirk smiled at her, unnervingly close. “You want the honors, or should I?”

Nyota just handed him the tricorder and stepped back.

The whole time, the alert sirens had been wailing, and it was utterly unnerving when the sounds cut out. She didn’t say anything about it, though. She knew what would happen if she mentioned it. Or rather, she didn’t know, but she was sure something would, and it would not be anything she would be happy about. It was that kind of day.

By the way Kirk’s whole body stiffened, he sensed it too, but he only paused momentarily before swinging the tricorder, this time held like a hammer, over and over again until the hole had been widened into a large oblong window just below waist height.

“Not to be a jerk, but in this case I’m not calling ladies first,” Kirk said as he raised his leg and ducked his head, slipping into the next room easily. He kept his back to the hole and she could tell he was sweeping the room.

His head appeared. “All clear on this side. Come on through, try to get that console to let us talk to Spock. He’ll get us out of here, or at least tell us what the hell is going on.”

Figures. Not the Enterprise, not the crew, just ‘Spock’.

If she were being honest, she felt the same way.

She misjudged one edge of the hole when she was crawling through, her attention focused on the area around her head, and she managed to nick her knee on a jagged edge. She’d had worse shaving, but even that tiny trickle of blood made things seem more serious. She went straight to the console, and this one was completely unlike the console in the meeting room. While that had been an antique, this was state of the art, programs opening and loading with the slick ease far beyond the supposed state-of-the-art machines she worked with on the bridge. It reminded her a lot more of the machines she’s used at the intelligence center, back at the academy.

She reined her thoughts in and had the communications software loaded in a matter of seconds; she wasted no time hailing the bridge, and she breathed an audible sigh of relief when she heard Chekov’s voice over the comm.

She was pretty sure she heard one from Kirk, too, from where he had positioned himself by the door, peering out through the crack of its opening.

“Enterprise! This is Lieutenant Uhura. Our tricorder is nonfunctional, and the situation on the ground is...unclear. Request beam up for two at your nearest convenience.”

It was Spock, not Chekov, who answered. “Lieutenant, we are currently experiencing difficulty locking onto your biosigns due to gravitational interference on site. Is relocation to an open space, perhaps the rooftop, a possibility?”

Kirk answered for her. “No way are we gonna be able to get up there without being spotted, Spock. What the hell is these guys’ problem, anyway? Have the engineers checked in? We haven’t seen them since the alarms went off and our elephantine friends decided we should spend some time in a closet.”

A pause from the Enterprise crew. Uh oh. Uhura had been on the bridge enough during emergencies to know that meant Spock was trying to decide exactly how much to tell them. Things must be bad, and in flux enough that he was considering hiding information from them.

When he did respond, his voice did not show any uncertainty, worry or warmth; it sounded flat and controlled. An even worse sign.

“Ensign Matthews beamed aboard almost immediately after the situation became unstable; she was entirely uninjured and has returned to the Engineering Deck to provide additional support. Ensign Warble is in sickbay. Lieutenant Lewis is unaccounted for. We had hoped he would be with you.”

A brief pause. “As for the situation on the ground, you are in a position to provide more information. The gravitational fluctuations are making it quite difficult for us to get reliable readings from the surface. The files you sent are most illuminating, and we shall discuss them at length once you return to the ship.”

He said it so calmly, like they were out on a milk run and not hiding from the…she heard the footsteps outside in the hallway and muted the comm immediately. She guessed there were two sets moving quickly, plus something being dragged. Kirk’s position at the cracked door meant that he wouldn’t see them until after they’d passed the doorway.

He looked at her, didn’t even have to gesture to his lips for her to know what he wanted. They waited silently, she at the computer and he at the door.

They never arrived. Instead, the footsteps paused at the room next to them--the closet-sized cell door, she realized, and saw the same realization hit Kirk. His face twisted into a frown before he set his shoulders, hauled open the door, and launched himself at whoever was there.

His only weapon was the broken tricorder. She could hear surprised shouting and wrestling, and then the unmistakeable thwick of a phaser being fired. Her stomach was sick.

Nyota rushed to the doorway but didn’t exit without cover. Lewis was on the floor, apparently unconscious, as was an Orion miner. Kirk was struggling with one of the elephantine miners. His shirt had a blast hole on his arm, and a thin trickle of blood was turning the gold into red.

Kirk did not appear to be winning, based on the reddening grimace and the hands wrapped around his neck in a chokehold.

She glanced back into the room, desperate for anything that could be used as a weapon. She grabbed a trash can from the corner and ran out into the corridor. She whacked the miner over the back of the head with it, and that was apparently enough to break his concentration, although not to knock him out. He let go of Kirk and whirled on her, three arms flinging her into the wall.

She felt winded, her eyes unfocused. She was still struggling to regain her balance when the miner and Kirk grappled their way back into the conference room.

On the floor of the hallway was an abandoned phaser. She grabbed it, pointed it through the open doorway at the miner’s back. She didn’t know if it had a stun setting, let alone if it was turned on. She didn’t really care. She fired.

Unfortunately, she fired just as they were turning, and the shot glanced off the miner’s second shoulder, making him shout in surprised pain and inadvertently fling Kirk against the wall they’d originally entered the room through. She heard a surprised cry from him as well, but she didn’t pause to look as she aimed again.

This time, her shot hit true, and the miner crumpled onto the ground.

She rushed to the man in the hallway, checking his vital signs. She’d only had basic field medical training, but he seemed fine, with regular breathing and a steady pulse; he was just unconscious.

Something was wrong.

She realized it almost immediately. Kirk hadn’t come to check on her, to check on the downed engineer. He cared about his crew more than anything; him not being here immediately was almost as ominous as the silence from before.

She left the man where he was and rushed over to where Kirk was still lying on the floor, next to the hole they’d made in the wall.

“Captain! Are you alright?” She was checking his pulse before he opened his eyes blearily. It was a little thready.

“Call...Spock. Wanna….go home now.” He smiled a little bit at her, but his eyes weren’t focusing properly.

That was the best idea he’d had all day.

She couldn’t see anything immediately wrong, so she stood and went over to the comm system, unmuting it.

Immediately, Spock’s voice filled the room. This time she could definitely hear the panic. “Lieutenant Uhura! Captain! What is your current status?”

The whole bridge crew must have heard the entire struggle. She’d been on their end of it too many times to count; she knew that moment of waiting, trying to interpret the muffled shouts and crashes were without causing a distraction, desperate to know and afraid to, all at once.

She responded, a little surprised at how even and professional her voice was. “The captain has sustained some injuries but is conscious. Lieutenant Lewis is unconscious but does not appear to be in immediate danger. Requesting immediate extraction, with a medical unit on hand in the transporter room.”

“Negative. We cannot beam you out from inside the building--the gravitational distortions are growing stronger. You must relocate to an open space.” She could hear the relief in his voice, even if his words didn’t acknowledge it. “The floor plans indicate an open platform two hundred meters away from your described location. We should be able to beam you up from there.”

Nyota looked at the captain. He was trying to get up, but it wasn’t working very well. She noticed a smear of red on the wall. She hoped it wasn’t his, but knew it was.

The room did have chairs. Old-fashioned office chairs with wheels. It would work. It had to.

“Commander Spock, I believe I can move the three of us there, assuming we don’t run into any more interference. It might take some time, though.” She paused, wanting to say more, ask more, but not sure how and knowing they don’t have the time for it. The whole gravitational thing was a very bad sign she was ignoring mostly because she had enough to deal with anyway, but she was pretty sure it would bite them all in the ass if she didn’t hurry.

“I will lose communications once we start the relocation process. Anything I should know?”

It was Sulu who answered. “Just...dodge the dragon, okay? We’ll get you out of there as soon as you’ve got direct line of sight to the sky.”

Nyota decided not to ask. She was pretty sure she was planning to do that anyway, and thinking about what he was talking about would only make things a thousand times worse. So she just said, “Copy that.”

Chekov chimed in with actually useful information. “Go left for a hundred meters, then go the left at the T. After fifty meters there should be a doorway on your right. That leads into a covered walkway that will lead you to the platform.” She heard him pause. “Good luck!”

“Lieutenant, we look forward to seeing you soon. I suggest you hurry as much as you are able. The gravitational fluctuations are increasingly irregular.” That was Spock. She knew she wasn’t the only one to sense the worry in his voice. From the floor, the captain shouted his response.

“We’re on our way! No souvenirs, sorry. Gift shop was closed. Be home soon.” Nyota smiled a little at that. His voice was a little stronger, and he was cracking jokes. Can’t be that terrible.

“Commander, see you soon.” She signed off quickly, before she could say something that didn’t really need to be aired on the bridge. Time was wasting, anyway. She grabbed one of the chairs and wheeled it over to Kirk. He looked at it, then at her, and a broad smile lit his face.

“Always knew you were a genius.” He let her help him into the chair, and between the two of them, he got more or less settled.

She did not like the mess of red on the carpet where he’d been lying, not at all. “Captain. Are you injured?”

He sighed. “He threw me into the wall, Uhura. Of course I’m injured! Let’s just go home so that Bones can patch me up.”

He had a point, really. She grabbed a second chair and wheeled it out into the hallway. It was a bit of a headache to get Lewis into it, but he wasn’t as heavy as the captain and that chair had better armrests, so it was surprisingly quick to get him positioned into it.

She left him there temporarily and went to grab the captain’s chair, pushing him in front of her like a wheelchair. She pushed the two chairs side-by-side in the hallway, and Kirk had enough sense to grab tightly to Lewis’s armrest, so that she could effectively steer them as a single item. They were heavy, but once they got rolling it moved pretty quickly.

They soon reached the corner Chekov had mentioned--time didn’t really have much meaning at this point, but it felt fast--and she glanced back the way they had come. There was a long trail of red behind them.

She stopped abruptly, moving around and crouching down in front of them. “Dammit Kirk, where is the injury?”

He looked...guilty, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. A very bloody cookie jar.

“It’s on the back of my leg. Look, just get me to Bones, he’ll fix it.”

Based on the trail they’d left, Bones might be able to fix the hole, but Kirk wouldn’t have any blood left at that point for it to keep in. She ruthlessly ripped off her sleeve to create a makeshift bandage and spoke through gritted teeth. “How high?”

He just looked at her, a little dazed. “What?”

She wasn’t sure what emotion was dominating at this point: concern, anger, or irritation. “How. High. Is. The. Injury. I’m going to make a tourniquet just in case.”

He gaped, then leered. “Pretty high. Been trying to get you to do that for years!”

She didn’t even waste her energy making her Not Amused face, just reached up the outside of his thighs to try to feel for an injury. The left leg was soaked in blood underneath. Shit.

She needed to get a tourniquet on him, and then she needed to get him to McCoy, ASAP. She managed to get the strip of cloth wrapped around his leg with only a little assistance from him lifting it, tying it tightly just at the edge of his groin. She looked at his face, and beneath the pain and the playful leer she saw the things she actually needed to see, gratitude and relief and trust (and even farther behind, things she didn’t, like the fear and shame).

She was behind the chairs again before she realized it, pushing them as hard as she could without losing control and spilling the occupants. By this point, Kirk was about as close to unconscious as you could get with your eyes still open. She silently willed the chairs to go faster.

The door they were supposed to use was obvious, because it was hanging open, a huge dent in the center and only one set of hinges still attached. It led to a metal grated walkway connecting a large platform over a deep mining hole. It looked abandoned.

The chairs made a loud rickety sound on the metal grating, and she winced at how hard the two men were bouncing, but there was nothing for it. She’d gone about ten meters when the hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and she knew something was wrong. Well, more wrong.

Then she heard the shriek and felt the wind rushing past her, and then a dragon landed on the walkway between her and the platform.

It was...well, it looked like a dragon, like Maleficent in the classic movie from the dawn of animation in Hollywood. It was the size of a helicopter, black with glittering scales, and the eyes (about the size of coconuts) gleamed with something she interpreted as sentience. The dragon eyed them carefully, creeping forward slowly with its head bobbing as if trying to trace a scent. Probably Kirk’s blood.

Nyota wanted to freeze in instinctual terror, but that wasn’t going to make things any better. She didn’t have a plan, but doing nothing wasn’t an option. She found herself once again on the other side of the chairs, between the men and the dragon, and yelling “Stop!” in Standard.

The dragon didn’t stop, but it it cocked its head in a familiar way. Suddenly an idea burst into her head, fully formed as if it had always been there.

Maybe it had.

She tried again, this time with her hands out and open, her tones calm, choosing high Orion based on their proximity to the system, to deliver her message. “We mean you no harm. We just want to go back to our nest.”

This time, the dragon really did stop. It pushed its head back, let out a high screech.

Nyota didn’t understand the screech, but she did understand the words that imprinted themselves in her mind in something similar to Old Orion, with a raspy, metallic taste. “Your digging has disturbed my sleep, destroyed my eggs! Why should you go to your nest, when mine lies in broken ruins, shifting size every moment?”

Ah. She was...her first thought was that she had seen this movie once, and it was such an odd, startling thought that she almost laughed from the random inappropriateness of it. Nonetheless, it cleared a number of things up. Not the gravity fluctuation business, but pretty much everything else.

Behind her, she heard a faint clattering of the uncoordinated limbs of someone trying to stand up. She ignored it. She did not have time for James T. Kirk and his overblown sense of heroics.

“We are not with the men who broke into your nest. They seek to confine us, as well.” Nyota paused, but felt compelled to tell the truth. “I do not think they knew you slumbered here, sister. They did not know what hurt they caused.”

Now the dragon really did seem angry, her shriek loud. “Lies! I heard them speaking in the night, whispers of how they sought gold and platinum in my nest. They were looking for me, trying to destroy my hatchlings! They will pay for their crimes!”

Nyota...wasn’t sure how to respond. The miners had certainly been hiding something; perhaps it really was this. Nyota didn’t really care to figure it out right this second, either. She just wanted to get Kirk and Lewis to McCoy as soon as possible. After that she could sort out the dragon and her broken nest.

Since the dragon seemed to be telepathic, Nyota tried to project her feelings of sympathy and grief, as well as her fear and urgency. She spoke to reinforce that. “Sister, I am sorry for your loss. I will help you solve this, I give you my word. But my nest mate is injured. Unless we return immediately, he will die. I beg you, let us get him to safety now, while he can still be saved.”

There was a long, long pause. Nyota held her breath.

Finally, the dragon dipped its head and took a step back. “You should not suffer as I have. Care for your nest mate. When you return, I shall meet you on the Winter Tower and we will end this criminal scum and their worthless task.” She felt, in her mind, the uncertain trust the dragon was giving her. She found that she didn’t want to break it.

A fierce wind whipped her face as the dragon launched herself into the air, leaving the walkway clear again. Nyota wasted no time shoving the two chairs along the last bit of walkway until they were in the clear center. She could see the stars overhead, brighter than on Earth and strangely unflickering. No real atmosphere, she realized. Just the ion dome encasing the base to keep the air inside.

She reached for her tricorder to tell Enterprise she was in position before remembering it was useless. It didn’t matter, though--before her arm had even swung back down, she felt the familiar tingling of a transporter beam.

When they materialized in the transporter room, a large group of medical personnel were waiting. Several rushed over to the unconscious Lewis, while others, including McCoy, went straight to the Captain. She could see him forming swear words on his lips as he tried to get a handle on the damage.

She filled him in on what she knew. “Major laceration on the rear left thigh. I tried to stop the blood flow, but…”

McCoy’s scanner was already beeping away in that area. “Looks like you saved the damn fool’s life.” He said, relieved and grumpy as only he could be. “Hong! I need the laser cauterizer!”

She turned to go, clear space for the medics to do their job, but Kirk grabbed her arm with a clumsy gesture. “Uhura.” he said seriously. “Did you really call me your nest mate?”

She couldn’t help the smile that filled her face. She wanted to claim it was just relief, but she knew there was a fair bit of fondness in it as well, and that it probably showed. “Yeah, I guess I did.”


	4. Chapter 4

She went to the bridge immediately. Even though all their people were now on board, it felt like the situation was far from resolved. She knew they needed an updated report from the scene, and she was the only one still able to walk there and give it.

When the lift doors opened and she walked onto the bridge, her eyes went straight to Spock, sitting in the captain’s chair, a pad in hand. His face got that frozen, overloaded look, like he was trying to process more emotions than he could handle and trying to show none of them. She walked purposefully to him, grabbing his hand without hesitation, knowing he’d read the emotional journey in her touch. That the most important parts--she was safe, the crew were safe, Kirk would be safe soon--were best conveyed this way, better even than her words.

After a brief moment, his face lost that overloaded look, clearing into what she, at least, could easily read as relief. “Can you report on the situation at the mining colony?”

Nyota took a deep breath, then released his hand. “We encountered this dragon that Sulu spoke of. It is not a legend, but a sentient creature who communicates telepathically and can understand spoken high Orion. She claims her nest was destroyed and that the miners were responsible. She thinks they did so intentionally, with the goal of securing precious metals from her nest. I believe the damage and emergency alerts were triggered by her attempts at retribution.”

That was an official-sounding, accurate report of the current crisis. It left out a great deal--the almost instinctive dislike of the elephantine miners, the ache of grief she’d felt when the dragon’s mind imprinted words in hers, the rightness she felt when she addressed the creature as Sister. That she had promised to help her, and fully intended to keep that promise.

Marshall, the communications officer on bridge duty, spoke. “The files you sent provided additional verification, really. They had files of a bunch of old myths about Orion dragons, with lots of extra annotations on anything related to the location or the minerals supposedly found in their nests. I think they really were hunting her nest.”

“Commander Spock, ground scans indicate an explosion on the eastern edge of the compound.” Chekov’s voice wasn’t panicked, exactly, but it certainly carried a great deal of tension. “Lifesigns in that building have completely disappeared.”

A beeping. “We are being hailed from the main building, Commander.”

Spock straightened his shoulders even more. “On screen.”

Nyota was still standing next to Spock’s right shoulder--his habitual place when Kirk inhabited the chair. She stared impassively at the screen, as if it was her usual place, as if she owned it. She knew there were probably dirt smears and blood on her face, but she held herself like a queen anyway.

On screen, there were two elephantine miners, looking disheveled and panicked. In the background, she could see a few more miners. Some of them looked injured. The one on the left, with a streak of dirt across his prehensile trunk, spoke with a squeaky, uncertain accent. “Enterprise? Are you able to receive this?”

They probably weren’t used to visiting ships being able to parse the gravitational fluctuations. It looks like Scotty’s meddling had paid off again.

“We hear you. Can you provide an explanation for the situation which required our personnel to beam aboard with injuries?” Spock’s tone was cold enough to burn.

The miner gaped for a second; perhaps he hadn’t been aware that the Enterprise had personnel on the ground, or that they’d beamed up. “We’re...I don’t know exactly what happened to them, and the situation is too complicated to explain. Look, you have to beam us up immediately, before she can destroy us too.”

Because she was standing next to him, she could see Spock’s jaw tighten. She was pretty sure it wasn’t visible on screen. His cool voice didn’t alter. “As Acting Captain of the Enterprise, there are many things I “have to do,” but obeying the orders of someone who has already endangered my crew is not one of them.”

Spock was PISSED. She didn’t have any other word to describe that sort of response. While he could be obnoxiously literal and pedantic when it suited him, he always did it because it suited him. He’d never do it in a crisis situation except to make a point. A very sharp one, apparently.

The miner’s blue skin turned a little gray at Spock’s words. Nyota suspected that meant roughly the same thing as when a human’s skin turned gray. Shock. Horror. Imminent death.

However, it seemed like that was enough revenge for Spock, at least for the moment. He spoke, still cool. “Nonetheless, I am offering temporary shelter aboard the Enterprise until we can secure a location unaffected by gravitational fluctuations or a justly-furious she-mearock. How many to beam aboard?”

The miner who had been speaking just gaped. The other miner, however, seemed to be thinking more clearly. “Fifteen. Three injured.”

Spock nodded once, sharp as a knife in water. “Standby for transport. Enterprise out.”

Marshall cut the connection just as the second miner was saying “Thank y-.”

She could hear Marshall telling the transporter room to expect additional passengers and find them temporary quarters, but it sounded like background noise to her. Everything was oddly muffled. She could see her hands out of the corner of her eye. They were still stained with Kirk’s blood. They were shaking, slightly.

She wanted to rest. But she had made a promise.

Based on his conversation with the miners, she suspected Spock was going to lose his mind when she told him she was going back down to talk to the dragon. Make no mistake, it would be telling him, not asking him. But it might be better if that conversation didn’t happen in the middle of the bridge.

“Commander? A word, before someone goes to talk to the miners who just beamed on board?” Her voice was low--probably only he heard it--but he flinched slightly from the note of steel in it. Warm steel, but steel nonetheless.

He nodded once, sharply, then stood. “Sulu. The bridge is yours.” He walked off, towards the ready room. He hadn’t looked directly at her the entire exchange.

As the door snicked shut behind her, he turned and grasped her hands in his tightly. He pulled them up, examining them carefully. At first she thought he was looking for the source of the blood.

“It’s not mine, it’s--” She didn’t want to tell him. “It’s Kirk’s.”

“I know. McCoy said he was stable, as a result of your handiwork.” Spock still hadn’t looked up. She could almost feel his pulse where his thumb crossed hers, wondered if that was her imagination or if they really were that in tune with each other.

She suspected it was the adrenaline, but a part of her hoped it wasn’t.

She opened her mouth, not sure where to start, but Spock cut her off with a thick sigh. “You want to go back. To talk to her. To help her.”

Nyota was surprised. “You knew?”

Finally, finally Spock looked at her, an odd expression hovering around the corners of his eyes. It was one she hadn’t seen before, hints of grief and fondness and admiration and several other things she couldn’t name.

What he said was much simpler. “Nyota. You are you; having encountered a creature that unique, in that much pain, you would not be you if you did not seek to alleviate some of her suffering.” He paused for a second. “And it seems the time you have spent with the Captain has only encouraged your innate tendency to face problems head-on without considering the very obvious risks.”

It was a jab at Kirk and her at the same time, and the way his mouth tipped up just slightly at the corner let her know if was meant in kindness. A flood of warmth filled her, and she knew it would be all right.

A warm huff of a laugh escaped her lips. “I--thank you. For understanding.”

He tilted his head once in acknowledgement, a gesture as distinctly Spock as the tiny furrow she could see in his brow. “If I may make a suggestion, however, you should speak with the miners, or have someone else do it, to gather more information before returning to the surface. Chekov is compiling data on the gravitational anomalies as we speak, and should have a report ready in ten minutes. Which is enough time for you to return to quarters and ensure your uniform conforms to Starfleet regulations. And to wash your hands. While many crew members might like to see Jim’s blood on your hands, I doubt they want it as literally as it currently is.”

The last bit was clearly a bit teasing. She smiled at him, leant up and pressed a brief kiss to his cheek.

“Yes, sir.” She whispered it in his ear, a bit of a tease present in her voice as well. When she pulled back, he was definitely smiling in his own Spock-like way.

She took a step back, still looking at him, but stopped when he uttered her name, uncertain. “Nyota. Would you like...it might be beneficial for a psi-sensitive to accompany you when you return to the surface, if the she-mearock is, as you have stated, telepathic.”

She hadn’t thought of that. And yes, it might be a good idea--or a terrible one. If the dragon perceived the telepath as invading her mental territory as the miners had her physical space, well...it hadn’t been their day so far, so why should it start being so now?

“It...I think it might backfire, actually. Could you be on standby, ready to beam down, but not start off down there? Her trust is already so fragile…”

Spock nodded, like he’d known that was the answer all along. How strange--outside of class, she couldn’t once remember him asking a question when he already knew, or even suspected, the answer. He looked at her for a moment longer, then leaned down, pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. “Nyota. Go.” 

She went.

\---------------------------------------

In ten minutes, she had stripped off the ruined uniform, scrubbed her hands and face, and put on a new uniform. She didn’t look too carefully at her nails--she knew she would see flecks of dark red underneath them, but she didn’t have the time or emotional energy to focus on what that had been so close to meaning, so she pushed it aside.

She found herself standing in the corridor next to the room where the miners had been placed, listening as Gaila explained what she’d learned by talking with them. The mining operation was, indeed, a treasure hunt, of the most brutal kind. The asteroid had some standard rare elements, particularly copper, but the real money was from the mearock eggshells, as they were composed of gold, platinum, and iridium. Their mining equipment was designed to sense cavities in the rock and they focused on those; apparently, this particular asteroid had been a mearock hatching ground for millennia, and there were thousands of niches all over containing eggshell fragments just waiting for someone to dig them up and profit off of them.

Gaila’s lips pursed, her whole face radiating disgust. “He...that fucker said they accidentally found an inhabited hole three months ago, but the broodmother was hibernating or something. So they killed her. Busted open the eggs, dissected the mother and chicks for their scales. Those bastards didn’t even care.” She took a deep breath, forcing herself to be more objective, even though she was clearly ready to punch something. “They realized it was more profitable to target active nests and adjusted their search parameters. They have found eight, so far, he said. Only the last one woke up before they could...neutralize her, and in the shuffle her eggs were destroyed. That was a week ago. The same day we received their request for help.”

Nyota’s stomach felt a little sick as that sunk it. The Enterprise was supposedly here to help these...these monsters. If the she-mearock hadn’t attacked when she did, the Enterprise would have just installed the better scanning equipment and been on their way, the miners even better equipped for their hunt.

Nyota swallowed her bile. “Were they working alone?”

Gaila nodded at this. “Yeah. Nobody would back an expedition based on a fairy tale, so they self-funded it. The organizer is a man called Edmund, he’s here on the ship. Nobody thinks that’s his real name, but that’s what they call him. We’ve got him--he’s not going anywhere.” At that, her smile was fierce and more than a little scary.

Ok. That was what she needed to know. She could bring this information to the mearock, they could work out a way to stop this from happening again. It wasn’t first contact, not exactly, not if the legends had been floating around the Orion system for centuries, but it wasn’t exactly NOT a first contact, either. They needed the mearock to help them get this asteroid, or the asteroid chain, recognized as sentiently inhabited by the Federation so that there won’t be a repeat of this sort of mess.

She reached out, squeezed Gaila’s shoulder gently. “Thanks, Gaila. I know interrogation isn’t really your thing, but nobody had a better background in both Orion-system culture and the complexities of their mining equipment. You did great.” 

Gaila made a face, between a glare and a satisfied smirk. “I can’t believe how cold they are about murdering for...for money. Because that’s what they’re doing, and they don’t even care. I’d be more than happy to stab them with my screwdriver to get more information if you wanted.” 

Nyota found herself smiling as she shook her head. “I’d like to do that myself, to be honest, but in the long run I think a trial and jail sentence will be preferable. I’ve got to go talk to the mearock, and you need to go tell the acting Captain what you’ve learned. And he’ll get someone from medical to bring a bio-scanner down here and we can get some real names instead of aliases. I’ve got a feeling that’ll end with several of them locked up for a long, long time, even without extra charges from the mining colony.” 

Gaila nodded. “Sounds good.” She walked off, then turned back and paused. “Nyota?”

“Yes?”

“Tell her...you’ll know what to say. You’ve got this. You always did.”

\------------------------------

As she rematerialized on the western peak next to the mining colony, she did not, in fact, feel like she’s “got this.” She could feel the wind whipping her hair around even before she had finished beaming. It was desolate and empty, and the dual pinprick suns felt alien rather than comforting. 

“Hello?” she called. Her voice sounded thin and small against the howling wind.

She felt the impression of words in her mind before she felt the ambient wind change into the sharp downdraft of flapping wings. “I did not expect thee to return, in truth.” The mearock landed about three meters away. Her scales glinted a dark indigo in the faint light, swirling like an oil spill on water. 

Nyota didn’t feel insulted. She wouldn’t have believed her, either, had she been in the mearock’s place. She took a deep breath. “Thank you, for allowing us safe passage earlier. My nest mate is healing now.” 

The mearock inclined her head slightly but didn’t say anything.

Nyota continued. “We captured the men who worked here, and forced them to tell us the truth. I am sorry, Sister, that I doubted your words. You were right--they came here specifically to harm you. They will never return here, but will be taken to their home planets where their crimes will be made known.”

This time, the mearock hissed angrily even as her words imprinted on Nyota’s mind. “You should bring them here, to ME, and I will punish them with death! It is my young they murdered, my and mine.”

Nyota really should have planned for that response. She thought fast. “No, Sister, I cannot. My people hold to a different form of justice than a simple eye-for-an-eye. Also, if they die here, their crimes die with them, and nothing will prevent another from taking up their murderous task. Instead, we will return them home and make them an example, so this doesn’t happen again.” 

She thought for a second, trying to figure out how to explain to the mearock that she was just a myth, to most people. It seemed the most ridiculous thing in the universe to think, that this beautiful, fierce creature blocking the wind from her face could be considered not real by anyone, let alone by the majority of the galaxy.

“My people did not know of your existence. The people from whom these miners broke away also know of you only in children’s stories, not as a real being. It is because of this lack of knowledge that they were able to do what they did.”

This time, the imprinted words were still angry, but overlaid with a sense of understanding, if not acceptance. “My people sleep for long stretches, waking only in small intervals when the sun is highest. It is unsurprising that we are not known to many.”

Ah. Nyota felt like a light bulb had gone off in her mind--of course. The asteroids in this belt had an extremely elliptical orbit, so extended hibernation made sense for when the asteroid was at the outer edges of of its path. If she recalled correctly, this particular asteroid was currently approaching its closest point to the sun. 

“When do you wake?”

The mearock seemed to consider the question, as if trying to decide whether or not to trust her. Finally, she answered. “We are waking now. The whole world trembles as we open our eyes.”

The gravitational fluctuations. How many of them must there be to cause that kind of anomaly?

“How many of you are there, Sister?”

“Many.” The last was said with clear suspicion. Nyota wasn’t going to get anything else on that.

Nyota decided to try a different tack, sharing rather than demanding. “I am part of a group which explores parts of space that are unknown to our people. We often find interesting places and meet new peoples. We do what we can to ensure that these people and our own can share the universe in peace, at least, or even interact and live together in harmony, if that is mutually beneficial. But to do this well, we need information. If your people want only to be left alone, my group can try to give you that, but we need to know what places you live. Especially if you sleep for long periods. Without knowing, people may visit your home while you sleep with no idea they are causing you harm.”

Nyota paused, trying to figure out how to explain the idea of partnership and trade when the mearock’s only experience with them was one of exploitation. “If you wish more contact between our peoples, we would help make that happen, too, in a way that makes you feel comfortable, in a meeting of equals.”

There was a long pause. 

“And if we were to meet, to discuss how our people could interact, would it be you in the discussion?”

Nyota took a steadying breath. It was more than she’d hoped for, honestly. “For a little while, yes. But we have...a friend of mine is specially trained for organizing these sorts of arrangements; my people will probably send my friend to represent our side of the conversation.” She didn’t know who from the diplomatic office they would send, but she had enough friends there still to consider it likely whoever they did send on the team would be someone she knew already.

The mearock blinked once. “I will discuss this with the others. Meet me again, here, in three sun-cycles. I will tell you our decision. Bring your friend, if you can.”

Three sun-cycles--nine standard days. Doable. Nyota nodded. “Of course, Sister.”

The mearock crouched as if to launch herself into the air. “Sister?” Nyota felt the words in her mind. “Thank you.”

Nyota nodded and the mearock launched herself into the air. Nyota stood on the ridge looking out at the rocks and domes below her, listening to the wind for a long moment, before pressing her communicator badge. “One to beam up.”

\-------------------------------

A day and a half later, she was leaning against the doorway of the medbay, trying not to smile as McCoy snapped at Kirk for what was clearly the zillionth time that he was NOT allowed to walk around yet, for any goddamn reason, and he damn well knew that. In one hand, she held a datapad loaded with old holos and novels (all thematically featuring dragons, as a joke), and in the other, a carrier with two cups of coffee. She met McCoy’s eyes and he nodded at her.

“Get over here, Uhura. Talk to him or tie him up or something so that he will stop goddamn moving. He’s going to rip open his stitches and get blood all over these sheets.” 

Kirk looked at her with a half-smile, half-smirk, but there was a mix of hidden emotions behind his bright blue eyes. It looked like gratitude, affection, and apprehension all jumbled up. His voice, however, was as cheerful and grating as ever. “Uhura! How are you?”

She walked over and sat in the guest chair, placing the datapad on the table beside her and handing him one of the coffee cups. “I’m...I’m fine, now. Did anyone fill you in on what happened while you were in surgery?”

He didn’t respond immediately, because he was busy smelling the coffee and rolling his eyes closed in what she really, really hoped was not his orgasm face. (She didn’t blame him--this was real coffee brewed from beans that she’d smuggled on board at their last docking at Luna. It was miles and miles beyond the replicated stuff.)

When his eyes finally settled back on her, they were crinkled in gratitude and shuttered with something hidden. “Yeah, Spock came by earlier and filled me in. I’m glad to know I didn’t hallucinate you talking to a dragon. He said she’s your friend now? That you made first contact by yourself?” He paused, then spoke softly, almost as if he didn’t intend for her to hear. “I still can’t believe he let you go back down alone.” 

A part of that got her hackles up, and she responded without being able to stop herself. “He didn’t ‘let me’ do anything--she trusted me, but it was a really fragile trust. It was too delicate to risk bringing anyone else, let alone another telepath when she was already feeling under attack. I was more than capable of handling it.” 

Kirk jerked as if she’d slapped him. “Uhura, that’s not what I meant. You are...you are so ridiculously capable and on top of everything that half the time I’m shocked it’s not you sitting in the center seat. I just meant, he worries about you. A lot.” 

She felt her eyebrow arching, and he must have seen something in her face, because he started backpedaling immediately. “Not worries, that’s totally the wrong word! It’s just...he cares about you and there were those gravitational fluctuations and a frigging DRAGON and who in their right mind wouldn’t worry when someone they lo--someone they cared about wanted to put themselves in the middle of that, alone, and why are you making me keep talking about this? He’s going to get in trouble and then I’ll get in trouble and I wasn’t even conscious when this whole thing went down!” 

That did drag a short laugh out of her, and she held her coffee cup up and clinked it lightly against his. “No worries. We already talked about it. He’s not in trouble, you’re only in trouble with McCoy for ripping open your leg. There’s a diplomatic team en route, they should be here in six days. We’ll meet with the mearock in a week and then hand it over to the diplomatic team; a prison transport is also on its way to take the miners to Orion. About half of them have pending suits already, and the local council is going to add illegal mining charges to the rest. It’s all looking good.” 

Kirk smiled, took a sip of his coffee, and managed (barely) not to groan in ecstasy. “Oh my god, where did you even get this? You know what, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know because then I would probably have to shut it down and that would be a tragedy. I am so, so glad you didn’t get hurt on this mission--and not just because you’ve got everything squared away better than I could have done. I knew I could trust you to handle it.”

She didn’t respond, just reached into her bag and pulled out a napkin-wrapped bundle. Opening it, she pulled out a single cookie and broke it in two, passing him the larger portion.

He took it with a smile. “Does this mean I can call you Nyota?”

She was smiling back when she answered him. “No.”


	5. Chapter 5

It took her almost two weeks to realize that the incident with the mining colony was still with her. She didn’t understand that the slow drag behind her eyes was chronic sleep deprivation, triggered by an unconscious desire to avoid the dreams she didn’t remember. And then, one night, she woke up alone in her room, and DID remember. It wasn’t a narrative so much as a jumble of images, swirling glass curved like eggshells and blood all over her hands and wind stealing her voice as the mearock’s shriek deafened her. 

The thought of calling her mother flitted across her mind, but she was saving her subspace transmission minutes for her brother’s birthday next week, and she hadn’t needed her mom’s help after a nightmare since she was eight. So instead, she found herself pulling on clothes and shoes and walking the long, dim corridors of the sleeping starship.

She wasn’t actually sure how long she walked, lost in her own thoughts, but eventually she realized she was outside McCoy’s office in the med-bay. She couldn’t see his desk from this angle, but the door was open and there was a dim glow from a desk lamp, so she assumed he was in there.

He called out “Who’s there?” before she had a chance to decide whether she was moving onward, so she shuffled into view, leaning against the door frame rather than entering. “Just me.”

McCoy was sitting at his desk, his hair a little out of place but otherwise his neat and orderly self. He had datapad in front of him and had the look of someone who’d been doing paperwork for a while. 

He looked at her for a long moment before the corner of his mouth tipped up. “Can’t sleep either, huh? Have a seat. Want some tea?” 

Nyota nodded and moved to sit in one of the chairs in front of the desk, pulling her oversized sweater tighter around her as she settled in. McCoy stood and picked up a kettle--a kettle? Where did he get a kettle on a starship?--then reached into the cabinet and pulled out a tin. She looked around the room as he fixed the tea. The walls were bare except for a large screen that would show patient vitals (currently blank since, for once, med bay was completely empty of patients). His desk had the messy disorganization she’d come to associate with many of the most brilliant minds on the ship, as if having things OUT of order made it easier for them to make those maddeningly insightful leaps of logic. Lord only knew what it would look like if they still used paper, rather than digital copies for documents. The only thing clearly positioned was a framed photo that she would bet was of him and Jo at the lake on her fifth birthday. 

She didn’t jump when McCoy held a steaming cup of tea in front of her, but it was close. She reached out and wrapped both hands around it, pulling it up under her chin so the steam bathed her face in warmth and moisture. It smelled like peppermint and chamomile.

McCoy took his seat again, his own cup placed on a small square of empty desk. The light from the desk lamp carved long shadows on his face. He sighed, hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. “You want to talk about it?”

Nyota shook her head even as her mouth opened. “No, it’s nothing, I just can’t sleep. It happens.”

McCoy just looked at her, took a sip of his tea. “Uh huh.”

Nyota took a sip of her own, eyes focusing on the back of the picture. “It’s just...there was so much blood. His blood was all over me, we almost lost him, and we’re barely even friends but I can’t stop seeing that trail of red in the corridor and I didn’t know what to do, not really. He was going to die, wasn’t he?” 

She heard him pick up his mug, but she didn’t hear him sip at it. When he spoke, his voice was slow, thoughtful, and controlled. He didn’t sound like he was talking about his best friend almost dying; he sounded like he was talking about theoretical physics. “The laceration he sustained would have been fatal if left alone for another twenty minutes, yes. The fall against the glass nicked the femoral artery. What you did slowed the blood loss long enough for us to get him back and repair the damage.” He paused. “Nyota? You quite likely saved his life by placing that tourniquet. You knew enough to do what mattered.”

She found her eyes dragging themselves over to meet his, her mouth saying words before she could even process them. “But what about next time? What if I...fall apart, or if I just....don’t know, then? What happens then?” She felt herself starting to panic, just a bit. She took a sip of tea to cover it. At least she finally understood why she wasn’t sleeping--guilt and fear about a hypothetical next time. Well, probably not hypothetical. It was Kirk, after all. That there would be a next time was basically guaranteed.

McCoy didn’t break eye contact. “Uhura. Of the 438 people on this ship, you are one of the best at displaying grace under fire, at keeping yourself professional when things are literally exploding all around us. In the next emergency, you will hold it together, because that’s who you are. You’re not an android, you’re not unfeeling--heck, you being here now proves my point perfectly; but, look. You make better choices because you fully understand and feel the emotional weight of a situation without getting distracted by it. You’re like Jim, that way, only you’re better at it than he is, at separating without compartmentalizing. You are definitely not going to fall apart in the middle of a crisis.”

He paused, looked away. “As for the other...I can give you a refresher triage tutorial, even extended cert if you want. Damn fool needs someone on the ground who can patch him up when he inevitably gets himself stabbed again. Lord knows your boyfriend will be too busy punching things to stop the bleeding.” 

She opened her mouth to defend Spock’s sense of priority, but no words came out. McCoy was right. If someone stabbed Kirk in front of him, Spock would just start breaking things. And people. She was a little surprised that McCoy knew it, though. Guess it WAS her job to know how to actually keep the fool captain alive. And knowledge was always a valuable weapon.

“That...actually, I would like that a lot. Thank you.”

McCoy nodded. “Let’s start tomorrow after dinner? I can make our first lesson about the femoral artery. Most people don’t realize that it’s almost as big a vulnerability as the neck in at least fifteen different species.”

She nodded. The panic was giving way to calm, the tiredness behind her eyes settling in like a warm blanket. “Leonard? Would you mind if I just sat here for a while while you worked?” 

This time, it wasn’t a half smile but a full one. She imagined something similar when he tucked Jo in at night. “No problem. I’ll be here.”

He picked up the datapad again, although she suspected he kept half his attention on her for at least five minutes. She just drank her tea slowly and looked at the wall, mind wandering. The last dregs were almost room temperature when she swallowed them, and her eyelids were made of lead. She stood up.

“McCoy? Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night.”

She was already past the doorway as she heard him call out “Sweet dreams.”

\---------------------------------------

 

In addition to McCoy’s extra triage training, she starts stopping by Hikaru Sulu’s fencing club on a semi-regular basis. She knows a fair amount of self-defense already--trained into her by her mother even before Starfleet Basic refined it--but it’s entertaining to watch a bunch of starship officers run around with swords like they were five years old. Well, probably less dangerous than five-year-olds with swords, but only because they actually (sort of) knew what they were doing. She thinks back to the saber on the wall of her grandparents’ house, the one she never got to touch, and is grateful neither she nor her brother ever had a chance to lose a limb playing with it.

She likes the exercise, too, but mostly she comes for the laughs.

Most of the bridge crew stops by at least occasionally, except Spock, who doesn’t ever show. Gaila is here every single Thursday, and she’s rapidly moving from dangerous newbie to legitimately competent swordswoman. Nyota won’t be surprised if, in another six months, she’s as good as the captain. Who comes most weeks and gets by pretty well on a jumble of mismatched but clearly formal training and pure unconventional ‘let’s-try-this-and-see-if-it-hurts’. 

McCoy came all of twice, blanched at Kirk laughing after one of those made-up moves very nearly took out his own eye, and left immediately (surprisingly without screaming). He hasn’t been back. Kirk had, of course, all irrepressible energy and joyful camaraderie which was, honestly, rather fun.

Although Sulu was the soul of obedience and cooperation on the bridge, at fencing club he gave absolutely no quarter. He bossed the crew and captain around like he was born for it, like some kind of legendary pirate captain on the high seas. He said it was to ensure everyone’s safety, but...having Scotty hop on one leg while trying to balance the blade on his head and dodge foam balls thrown at him? Probably not just for safety. Funny, though. Definitely funny.

Nyota couldn’t quite figure Sulu out, although she liked him. He was...on one hand, he was kind, and made clever jokes without them being cutting, and he had a veritable greenhouse in his quarters. She’d had several arguments with him about the proper way to cook just about every Terran dish, and quite a few Lunan ones as well, and honestly, he usually won. She knew he’d majored in botany--that’s how he met his husband Ben, who was a terraforming engineer. It was almost like he had two faces, though, because his role on the Enterprise wasn’t in research, it was as helmsman, and he regularly showed off hair-raising piloting moves “for science.” He was at least as much of an adrenaline junkie as the captain, probably more so. He was utterly ruthless, especially in cooperative games, whether they were sports or cards, and she suspected he’d be just as cutthroat in a real situation. She knew there was no way she’d play chicken with him--even a Klingon would blink first, and he’d throw his own brother into a volcano if that was what it took to accomplish the mission.

It was both comforting and terrifying.

It was also fun. At fencing club, anyway. So, more often than not, she found herself spending Thursday evenings with a blade in hand, facing off against one of her colleagues with a grin on her face and sweat dripping from her hair. She wasn’t nearly as dedicated as Gaila, but she did put enough effort in that she was actually learning something. She found she preferred the smaller blades, focusing on speed and accuracy over reach. 

Tonight, she beat Kirk five to one, and she couldn’t keep the smile off her face as she gave him a sweaty one-armed hug and said, “Better luck next time, Kirk.” 

He smiled right back as he pulled away to theatrically wipe off his already-soaked shirt. “Don’t be ridiculous, Uhura. I don’t need luck.”

A glance at the gym clock showed it was later than she thought, so she grabbed her bag and headed the same way as Kirk, absentmindedly listening to him complain amiably about Sulu’s tyrannical rule. She was was supposed to have a late dinner in quarters with Spock tonight (the one time she called it ‘date night’ he’d gone on a surprisingly lengthy and feminist rant about antiquated mating rituals of humans--probably another instance of Amanda Grayson speaking from the grave, although it could have been echoes of Sarek--so ‘late dinner in quarters’ it was) and she would rather just shower there than show up late. First officer quarters were right next to the captain’s quarters, so they walked together to the lift. Kirk didn’t mention it, so either he didn’t realize where she was going or he was being uncharacteristically discreet. 

Actually, the captain and first officer shared a bathroom, she realized. “Dibs on the shower,” she said as they exited the turbolift.

Kirk paused for a second in his monologue, like he didn’t register what she was talking about. “You want to...oh. Oh! Ew, I did not need to know that. Yes, you can have the shower first. I am going to go hang out with Gaila and Chekov, I won’t be back until late. So you guys don’t need to worry about...the noise or whatever. Bathroom’s all yours.” 

...And that rambling mess was slightly uncalled for, Nyota thought, even as she felt a blush creeping up her face. “It’s just dinner. It’s not like…” well, it was, actually. Just probably not as loudly or wildly as he was apparently imagining. That it had crossed his mind at all was disturbing.

And then she caught the teasing twinkle in his eye. “You jerk!” She punched his arm with semi-mock annoyance. He was still making fake outraged faces at her as Spock opened the door and saw both of them standing in the hallway, grinning and sweaty. To his credit, he just raised one eyebrow and stepped aside so Nyota could enter. 

She didn’t look back as Kirk called “Have a good night” with a laugh in his voice, but she did raise a hand briefly in a wave. 

\---------------------------

At least a small part of the reason that she preferred to shower at Spock’s was that the first officer was allocated five full minutes of shower water before it switched to sonics, rather than the standard three minutes. Those two minutes made a big difference when you had as much hair as she did, and she wasn’t going to fail to appreciate how the small luxuries in life made a big difference.

She was toweled off and dressed in the change of clothes she’d brought--leggings and a loose tunic that always made Spock’s eyes go just a tiny bit wider and darker--and she heard the soft murmur of Vulcan voices in the other room. Spock’s voice sounded downcast and a bit...off. Probably Sarek, then. She knew the two had been trying to reestablish some sort of relationship after Vulcan, but that they were both too much alike in too many ways, and both still struggling with their losses, for that bridge to be rebuilt easily. 

She loitered for an extra minute, re-fixing her drying hair, until the voices stopped. She slid open the bathroom door and looked over at the desk, and was surprised to see that the holocall was still ongoing, but she couldn’t couldn’t see the screen around Spock’s ruler-straight back. At the sound of the bathroom door opening, his back stiffened even more, radiating discomfort. He spoke stiffly to the caller. “We should discuss this another time. I have a guest, and it grows late for you.”

She was shocked--actually shocked--to hear a chuckle from the screen, then a dry response in Vulcan. “I see you do not wish me to meddle in your affairs. As if I would.” It’s not Sarek’s voice, but it sounds familiar, and the verb tense used is one normally reserved for family. Odd.

Spock sighed, then turned to her, his face displaying vulnerability in an unusually open way. He held out his arm to her, as if he wanted her to join the call. “Nyota.” She went over to him but didn’t touch him, not even to brush her fingers against his outstretched hand as she normally would. He clearly wasn’t comfortable and she wasn’t going to add to that with open displays of affection in front of who-knows-who.

On the screen she saw a Vulcan elder in what looked like a temporary tent. Probably at the colony, then. As soon as she came into view, the old man’s eyes widened and he smiled brightly, wrinkles around his eyes crinkling. It looked odd to see such open emotion displayed on Vulcan features, but she found herself smiling back.

‘Nyota Uhura,” he said. “I am honored to see you.” Although he used a grammatically formal tense, he said it with an air of familiarity, as if they had already been introduced. Had already formed a bond of trust.

Was--was Spock actually talking to the older version of himself? As soon the thought occurred to her, it was like she was seeing the face anew, recognizing the tilt of the nose, the edge of the jaw, and knew immediately who this was.

She didn’t know what to call him, so she just said, “I’m happy to meet you. Again. Sort of.” It wasn’t a lie. Seeing...he was undeniably Spock, under all those years, but he wasn’t. He had a peacefulness, a spark of almost childlike joy radiating from his face. It made her happy to think of Spock feeling that way, this many years behind him and, in at least one possible future, his eyes were still bright, his self-doubt transformed into the self-acceptance that she sees before her. It eased a worry she didn’t even know she had felt.

There’s a moment where she wants to ask about her counterpart--what she was like, what her future held in a different universe--but she steps away from that idea almost immediately. She knows both Kirk and Spock struggle with their knowledge of the way things could have been, in another universe where the Kelvin docked back at Earth safely all those years ago. She doesn’t want to join their little club of trying to live up to selves that never even existed, of grieving an already-lived future that never was. 

The Spock on the screen just watches her for a moment, then says, “I must go--the work starts early with the sun tomorrow. Be well, Nyota. It is a great joy to see you again.” He paused, looked directly at the Spock sitting beside her, still telegraphing discomfort. “Good luck.” 

Her Spock just held up his hand in the traditional V farewell, but didn’t say anything as he closed the connection. She looked at him, but his face was a closed wall. He snaked an arm around her waist, pulling her close and staring at the blank screen. There was a strange flatness to his expression, a dullness she couldn’t read.

“I didn’t know you two spoke.” It wasn’t a question, but she knew he would interpret it as an opening if he wanted one.

“We speak of the colony and its progress. He is...uniquely positioned to understand many things about its growth and how I can aid in the rebuilding efforts while maintaining my commitment to Starfleet.” His voice is still stiff, like he’s confessing a weakness, but his shoulders are starting to lose some of their tension. 

She decides to keep it light, and open, letting him share what he’s ready to and not pushing for more. “And how are things progressing there?” 

He still doesn’t look at her, but she can feel the tension continuing to ease, although the odd blankness underneath remains. “They are progressing slightly slower than hoped, but still within acceptable range. The terraforming crew, with which he is working closely, hope to have agricultural zones fully established within six months. It is...it is something, at least.” 

Nyota nodded, wrapping her own arm around his shoulders and squeezing once. “It is something, at that. Is it strange, to see...him?”

At last, Spock looked up, his eyes failing to hide his uncertainty. “Yes. It is. But our world is so small now, we cannot ignore each other, either. Better to establish how to interact now. And, as I said, his knowledge in this situation is...unique.” 

Nyota didn’t think she really understood, but then again, she wouldn’t expect to. She felt uncomfortable and decided to drop the subject. “You hungry?”

He didn’t say anything, but his eyes looked at her gratefully as he stood from the desk and headed towards the replicator, pulling her along gently with a hand wrapped lightly around her wrist.

\----------------------------

The Enterprise’s standing background order, when they aren’t on any particular mission, is exploration. That ends up entailing a lot of downtime in the black between systems, when even the artificial lighting cycle doesn’t really make up for the feeling of perpetual night. 

For the security personnel, it means drills and extra training sessions in the gym. For the science team, it means a lot of long-term experiments get run and research papers get drafted. For communications, it means a lot of data gets processed, looking for notable blips in the signal-to-background fog that comes from being surrounded by stars so far away you can’t even see them. It’s like a surround sound input of distant refrigerators humming on all sides, and she’s listening carefully trying to make out the neighbors’ whispers amid all the meaningless electronic whirs.

It’s not a secret that she loves those hours, especially when she’s got an off-shift so it’s even quieter than normal, and she’s just sorting through the mishmash of sounds, finding meaning in the mess. Often, they’ll see patterns, but it’s usually just standard intercepted transmissions, passing cargo vessels or a signal generated by nearby a astrobody that gets passed on to the science teams. 

Sometimes it’s not, though. One night, she and Marshall spent three hours decoding what looked like a distress signal only to realize that they had somehow picked up a garbled, time-damaged signal of an old Terran radio play that had somehow bounced along as radio waves all the way out here. They’d started to draft an urgent memo for the captain before Marshall recognized it from his classical media class as written by someone named Welles. 

They’d laughed themselves silly. Just as they were getting themselves back to business, Chekov had passed by the lab and asked, “Any news?” That set them off again, Nyota clinging to the console because she was laughing so hard she couldn’t stand. 

They never did explain it to him.

Tonight, the crew in the communications center was minimal; just Nyota and Lee, who was filing reports at the far side of the room. Nyota isolated a strange gravitational signal, but it didn’t look like a communication. It had several of the hallmarks associated with planetoid data, so she forwarded it to sciences and immediately dismissed it from her mind. She had picked up a strange transmission in Romulan about a week ago, and was trying to make sense of it. The frequency was one that hadn’t been used in decades, and the encryption patterns were almost too simple. The content itself was so basic it was almost certainly a code--the computer analysis showed its most likely meaning to be a chess move. 

Nyota kept tumbling over it in her mind--why would someone have bothered to send an instruction for a game across the star system, especially one for an old Terran game, in Romulan? If it was a coded military message, surely they would have encrypted it better, and if it wasn’t, what was it? Where had it originated, if the frequency hadn’t been used in years? She was currently trying to map the transmission’s probable path, hoping to find a possible origin and thereby clues about its significance. It was an interesting side project, perfect for this quiet space just outside the Nibiru system.

She was so absorbed in the calculations that she almost spilled her replicated (and cooling) coffee when the door hissed open. It was Sulu, looking awake and focused, holding a datapad in his hand. “Uhura! Did you see this data from Nibiru?”

She pursed her lips slightly. “Enough to know it was something sciences needed to see. What about it?”

Sulu handed her the datapad, a large graph filling the screen. It showed the beginning of an exponential curve, with the dotted extrapolated future taking off sharply to the top of the screen. “If we’re reading this right, there’s a planet in that system days away from a cataclysmic tectonic event. Even Olympus Mons wasn’t giving off readings this high in 2117.”

Nyota felt her face pale. She’d seen footage of the Olympus Mons eruption in grade school, studied the planet-wide climate disruptions on the Martian terraforming efforts even a decade later. It was one of the great disasters that echoed in human memory, like Vesuvius, like Fukushima, like the Chicxulub asteroid. And this was potentially larger scale?

Her hands were at the keyboard before she even realized it, pulling up the files for the Nibiru system. Sulu was standing next to her, looking at the screen. “Shit,” he breathed. “It’s inhabited. Prewarp.” 

She met his eyes, both of them realizing the meaning of this immediately.

Sulu saved her the trouble of saying it. “The goddamn prime directive.” 

Nyota just stood up, opening the same file on the datapad as she walked to the door. She looked over her shoulder to see Sulu still reading the details on the desk console.

“Sulu. We’ve got to tell Kirk. You coming?”

He was right behind her by the time the the turbolift was on their floor.


End file.
